This paper analyses discourse produced in a larger study aimed at encouraging students in Lesotho to talk the language of science as a meaningful way of learning. The paper presents a semiotic and activity based analysis of discourses of students learning to talk physics while enrolled in a pre-tertiary access programme. Prior to the access…

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of Whole Faculty Study Groups on student achievement and teacher practices in grades K-3 of a Nebraska school district. Whole-Faculty Study Groups (WFSG) are a type of professional learning community (PLC). Using a mixed method approach, both K-3 student scores on Dynamic Indicators of Basic…

Learning Communities (LC) represent an alternative model of teaching and learning in higher education that can foster intercultural competence and knowledge. "Some of the distinctive features of LCs are that they are usually smaller than most units on campus, they help overcome the isolation of faculty members from one another and their…

Quantitative and qualitative data collected from students who have completed a Master of Science in Education Learning Community Program support the effectiveness of the learning community model in facilitating professional growth and transformation. Instructors model constructivist theory. Peer review, collaboration, and reflective analysis of…

Educational computer games provide an environment in which interactions among students, teachers, and texts differ non-trivially from those of the traditional classroom. In order to build and research computer games effectively, it is important to provide a theoretical background that adequately describes and explains learning and interactions in…

Although literacy coaching means many different things, all coaching initiatives have one common commitment: the goal of building teacher expertise. In the authors' work as coaches and with coaches, they have relied on teacher study groups as a main strategy for accomplishing this task. Their understanding of the potential for study groups has…

This article considers four learning biographies from professional musicians. Each musician holds a different portfolio career and is from a different age category. The key questions I ask are: "How does one learn as a musician?", "What knowledge, attitudes, values and artistic skills are necessary to function effectively and creatively as a…

This article examines children's role-play within the framework of language socialization, as well as the relations between (a) utterances made by young bilingual Korean children within the role-play frame and (b) metacommunicative utterances about the play. It analyzes the language features that children use to set up the context of role-play and…

The concept of managing an organization's knowledge has caught on in recent years (Sallis & Jones, 2002). Dubbed knowledge management, the field has grown as it addresses key characteristics of knowledge, like the concept that knowledge cannot be separated from a knower and the idea that there are two types of knowledge: tacit, which is intangible…

In this article we suggest that online environments can function as alternate "organizations" for pre-service and beginning teachers who may find themselves struggling in schools. Building on prior work on framing and reframing in organizations and schools, the authors present a new frame of analysis specifically geared for web-based…

This article examines Asian women's experiences of belonging to communities of practice within higher education in Britain. The research explores the ways in which women engage in friendship and support networks, how they negotiate their identities and their experiences of being marginalised and "different". The research argues that…

The paper composes a framework for learning design, using Web 2.0 technologies in teacher training, transferring the advancement in technology to become an affordance in the teaching/learning process, based on Bloom's Extended Digital Taxonomy in order to enhance the Technological Pedagogical and Content Knowledge of teachers. As a case study, it…

Having implemented and evaluated over 35 mlearning projects in a variety of contexts in higher education over the past 6 years the researcher is ready to share the untold secret: not all mlearning projects succeed! This article critiques three of the researcher's mlearning projects that can be classed as "failures" and compares them to successful…

According to Birchak, Connor, Crawford, Kahn, Kaser, Turner, & Short (1998), Fang, Fu, & Lamme (2004), Kennedy & Sheil (2010), and Wiliam (2008), teacher study groups can provide a supportive and collaborative professional development environment. The purpose of this study was to examine the professional development experiences of…

Harold Kwalwasser has put together a call to action for education reform that makes a clear case for what has to be done in order to educate all children to their full potential. He visited forty high-performing and transforming school districts, charters, parochial, and private schools to understand why they have succeeded where others have…