The purpose of this dissertation was to identify if rich-media discussion boards are effective in helping students in online graduate courses develop better social presence and become more engaged with their fellow students and instructor. Additionally, the researcher sought to discover the extent to which rich-media discussion boards affect…

Constant advancement in technology demands that all users upgrade their competence for relevance. In most cases, the degree and the strategies needed for such upgrading are usually lacking to guide one's effort against waste of resources, energy and time. This research studied capacity building index of lecturers and strategies for effective adult…

The greater demand for administrators and teachers to stay current in the ever-changing world of technology and education (Cho, 2016; Merriam & Bierema, 2014), justifies the need for more effective, personalized approaches to professional development (Dill, 2015). The data analysis procedure in this study was multi-step and addressed the five…

This edited volume offers critical reflections on an essential component of research method in the field of second language acquisition -- data. Scholars working on diverse areas (e.g., pragmatics, corrective feedback, phonology) and approaches (e.g., corpus linguistics, concept-oriented analyses, variationism) have come together to identify…

Professional development (PD) is widely used to aid teacher development and improve student learning outcomes. In PD, skilled facilitators use research-based frameworks to support and provide a lens for teachers' engagement with artifacts of practices (e.g., student written work). However, often what is unaccounted for in PD design is the use of…

This study examines how a PD program to promote teachers' shift toward a student-adaptive pedagogy impacts students' multiplicative reasoning. We describe the underpinnings of this pedagogy and main components of the PD program. Then, we present key features of participants, data collection/analysis methods, and the written assessment used to…

This study examined middle and secondary mathematics teachers' knowledge structures and informal inferential reasoning (IIR). Using task-based clinical interviews (Goldin, 1997) and cross-case analysis, nine teachers responded to four LOCUS assessment tasks (Jacobbe, 2016). Responses were used to construct knowledge structure maps for measures of…

In this paper we discuss our development and use of a conjecture map for a large research project on the design and implementation of an online professional development model. Following Sandoval's (2014) model, we built the conjecture map to reflect our high-level conjectures (overarching goals of the project), the embodiment of the learning…

Civic and character education are both essential pillars that support the mission of public schools. As defined in statute, civic education means the cultivation of informed, responsible participation in political life by competent citizens committed to the fundamental values and principles of representative democracy. Character education means…

In this article, we review approaches to modeling a connection between spatial and mathematical thinking across development. We critically evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of factor analyses, meta-analyses, and experimental literatures. We examine those studies that set out to describe the nature and number of spatial and mathematical skills…

The aim of this research was to assess the classification of science test items of TIMSS grade 8 based on higher order thinking skills (HOTS) and determine whether those classified-science test items can be an assessment tool in science class. Sixteen sample test items of HOTS were chosen from 37 reasoning items of TIMSS 1999, 2003, and 2011;…

Critical thinking skills are one of the 21st century skills that are effectively trained by using the OR-IPA and Problem Based Learning (PBL) Model, therefore this research aims to compare the effectiveness of both. Research design used True Experiment with Randomized Subject Control-group Pre-test and Post-test with 94 pre-service physics…

Despite increasing scholarly interest in language learners' identities, little effort has been devoted to critically reviewing the latest research on second language learners' identities and providing future directions for study. This recent increase in research then raises an important set of questions: (a) How have second language learners'…

The current climate of travel bans, violence and conflict, and reconciliation and accountability in this country and across the globe make the three books discussed here timely and relevant, as they each point out early in their introductions. Individually and collectively, these volumes provide a fascinating way to view the affordances of…

This article argues for understanding Kenneth Burke's linguistic pedagogy as a teaching practice rooted in the appreciation of disability. It explores connections between the Cold War cultural context and the present day, describing how a nuanced approach to disability pedagogy can resist impulses toward competition and conflict in the classroom…