Many colleges and universities have created college-sponsored communities on Facebook and Twitter as a means to interact, connect, and build community online (Center for Community College Student Engagement, 2009; Wankel & Wankel, 2011). However, the literature provides no clear picture of how community college students use social network…

Design based research (DBR) is an appropriate method for small scale educational research projects involving collaboration between teachers, students and researchers. It is particularly useful in collaborative projects where an intervention is implemented and evaluated in a grounded context. The intervention can be technological, or a new program…

The need for English and literacy curriculum to connect with young people's lifeworlds to build bridges and frames of reference that connect traditional English curriculum with digital texts and literacies, are increasing priorities in curriculum frameworks in Australia and elsewhere. This paper reports on a project in which the authors worked…

Evidence on the effect of extending the school day is decidedly mixed because of the stark differences in how schools use additional time. In this paper, I focus narrowly on the effect of additional time used for individualized tutorials. In 2005, MATCH Charter Public High School integrated two hours of tutorials throughout an extended day. The…

Despite growing support of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights in the United States, the Southeastern region continues to pass legislation that discriminates against those who do not fit normative notions of sexuality and gender. This opposition affects LGBT students and the teachers who identify as LGBT activists. This study of…

This study investigates vocabulary learning strategy (VLS) preferences of lower and higher proficiency Japanese university science students studying English as a foreign language. The study was conducted over a 9-week period as the participants received supplemental explicit VLS instruction on six strategies. The 38 participants (14 males and 24…

The Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol (SIOP) is increasingly used as an instructional framework to help elementary and secondary teachers support English language learners (ELLs). This useful tool has helped teachers gain the knowledge, skills, and dispositions they need to support ELLs learn subject-area content and skills while learning…

The value of student voices in dialogues about learning improvement is acknowledged in the literature. This paper examines how the views of students regarding School-based Assessment (SBA), a significant shift in examination policy and practice in secondary schools in Hong Kong, have largely been ignored. The study captures student voices through…

Background: In general, children with specific language impairment (SLI) tend to fall behind their typically developing (TD) peers in educational attainment. Less is known about how children with SLI fare in particular areas of the curriculum and what predicts their levels of performance. Aims: To compare the distributions of performance of…

In this paper, the researcher looked into his own theoretical and practical knowledge of teaching English to young learners through an autoethnographical research design. In order to understand to what extent these theory-driven conclusions "actually work" in primary school English language classrooms, the researcher recorded…

Purpose: An overview of English aims, theoretical scope and methods is badly needed. Ministries throughout the English-speaking world have become dominated by a demand for testing -- stimulated no doubt by regular Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) surveys -- and lost sight of first principles. The purpose of this…

In a values-based education model, ethical vocabulary is introduced to young children with the expectation that embracing these values will elicit positive dispositions and self-regulation. Such an approach has been reported to improve student and teacher wellbeing, academic diligence, the teaching and learning environment, student-teacher…

This article offers a personal view of the reform of the undergraduate English syllabus which is soon to come into effect at Oxford University. The particular example is analysed in relation to two more general developments: on one hand, changing conceptions of the place and purpose of language study in the discipline of English, and on the other,…

The article analyses the presence of William Shakespeare as intertext in three recent novels by black British writers which deploy the work of the Bard as they explore British and European identities. Caryl Phillips's "The Nature of Blood" recreates an Othello-like figure who in early Modern Venice struggles to come to terms with his…

Ms. Mayer, a recently retired English language arts teacher, frequently used strategies described in John Golden's book "Reading in the Dark: Using Film as a Tool in the English Classroom." In this book, Golden suggests that ELA teachers "reverse the order: use a film clip to practice the reading and analytical skills that we want our students to…