The lexical quality hypothesis assumes that skilled readers rely on high quality lexical representations that afford autonomous lexical retrieval and reduce the need to rely on top-down context. This experiment investigated this hypothesis by comparing the performance of adults classified on reading comprehension and spelling performance. "Lexical…

I propose a conceptualisation of drama in school education as improvisation within a framework that has a number of fixed but changing structures. I examine how the "drama in schooling" practice of one country, New Zealand, might be seen as a group improvisation in which, through dramatic negotiation, participants evolve their goals,…

This article discusses the authors' dialogue and collaborative writing regarding their professional views on the subject of parenting. The use of metaphor and analogy for parenting as a collaborative, cocreative relationship is woven throughout with references to the authors' own collaboration, research, and clinical applications in the fields of…

This paper brings the concept of "acting in concert" to the aid of those wanting to understand the nature of verbal communication. Verbal communication is introduced as a form of concerted activity which has a management function vis-a-vis other concerted (and cooperative) activity. In the body of the paper, verbal communication is likened to…

The paper adopts the co-evolutionary perspective on the human society/natural environment relationship developed, particularly, by the economist Richard Norgaard. This implies that human environmental knowledge is necessarily dynamic and incomplete. By extension, it is also fragmentary, in the sense that what may hold true when considering…

The present study investigated the effect of context on the strategies the EFL learners utilized to process idioms. To do so, ten Iranian intermediate EFL learners were randomly assigned to two groups who then attended a think-aloud session. The 5 subjects in the first group were exposed to an animated cartoon including 23 unfamiliar idioms while…

In this article, we examine the relationship between classroom talk, teacher-student roles and paradigms for literacy and learning in two ninth-grade English Language Arts classes. Our goal was to understand how these roles and practices socialized students into norms for academic language and literacy as they read and wrote poetry in preparation…

The present paper explores the problems of English Language and Literature junior and senior majors, who are enrolled in a drama course at the Islamic University of Gaza (IUG). The course emphasizes the significance of drama. Morgan (1987: 7) defines drama as an "art of communication," which is essential in teaching literature. A survey…

When examined carefully, it is seen that there is not an available and detailed curriculum designed for the aim of foreign language teaching with integrated cultural items of the target language in the programs of the schools under authority of the Ministry of Education and Turkish higher education institutions. In recent years, the specialists…

The 1999-2000 Transfer Velocity Project (TVP) cohort of 147,207 community college students is used to develop both a college-level endogenous model, appropriate for applied research and guidance for campus action, and a student-level model. Survival analysis (Cox regression) is employed to evaluate the relative contribution of 53 student-level…

Students' lack of understanding about the relationships between geometry in two and three dimensions led the author to a surprising source of inspiration--the ancient philosopher and geometer Plato. From a theoretical perspective, the author's approach embodies the four instructional strategies that Eggen and Kauchak (2001) suggest for engaging…

An experiment examined whether beginning readers can successfully learn to detect and define homonyms, and whether this ability correlates with vocabulary and/or phonological awareness. First graders received ambiguity instruction involving homonyms in isolation, in riddles, and in text. A control group received reading lessons without a…

This article discusses shopping, especially critical shopping, as a process of informal and incidental adult learning about the intersecting politics of globalization and consumption. The author uses academic skills and disciplines as a metaphor to respond to an emerging conceptual question: To what extent can formality, informality, and…

This study explores how entering female preservice teachers position themselves-the plotlines, obligations, responsibilities and duties they are prepared to enact, the expectations they hold for students, and the implications these have for teacher education. Using positioning theory, the authors analyze application letters of 20 elementary…

Teaching a course in multicultural education at a largely white, middle-class, suburban liberal arts college has its challenges. Among those challenges is a prevailing naivete among the student population regarding the role sociocultural structures have in creating the kinds of opportunities that afford social privileges; likewise, the students…