The focus of this article is on the experiences of staff members involved in a student support programme. The experiential, social, and student-centred approaches incorporated in this programme provided not only students, but also academics with pathways to lifelong learning. Functioning in a community of practice (CoP) (with students and also…

Peer-assisted learning (PAL) strategies, such as the reciprocal style of teaching, have been shown to be effective in developing motor skills. Despite this research, little is currently understood of how PAL strategies influence the teaching-learning process. The purpose of this study was to use a didactic methodology (Amade-Escot, 2005) to…

Reciprocity is fundamental to effective mentoring relationships. However, we argue that it is inappropriate, and perhaps unethical, to expect comparable levels of reciprocity in all mentoring relationships. Instead, contextual factors influence optimal levels of reciprocity. Foremost is the developmental stage of the protege, with less mature,…

Peer assessment is a common form of shared learning in which students provide feedback on each others work. Peer assessment takes many forms; and involves students and tutors taking various roles at different stages of the process. This study explores the views and opinions of undergraduate students in relation to their perceptions and experiences…

This article addresses the issue of instructional guidance in reciprocal peer tutoring with task cards as learning tools. Eighty-six Kinesiology students (age 17-19 years) were randomized across four reciprocal peer tutoring settings, differing in quality and quantity of guidance, to learn Basic Life Support (BLS) with task cards. The separate and…

The University of Ottawa in Canada offers a peer-mentoring program (whereby an experienced student provides support and guidance to another student) and an associated training program for all peer mentors through its Student Academic Success Service. In addition to the formal training, some peer mentors receive feedback and support through an…

The report of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) Panel on Research and Teacher Education recommended that teacher educators need to systematically and empirically study their own practice. The premise of the report was that teacher educators need to carry out quality research in order to better inform those inside and outside the…

In face-to-face instruction of "Reciprocal Teaching (RT)", students' reading processes and dialogues with their peers are hardly observed. As a result, the teacher has few clues to identify students' learning difficulties and provide further scaffoldings. To record students' reading processes and enhance their comprehension, this study reports on…

This article reports findings from a case study into reciprocal learning in tutor groups in a research-based master's programme, run jointly by Roehampton University, London, UK and Fontys OSO, The Netherlands. The research was designed to investigate to what extent, and how, forms of reciprocal learning arose in tutor groups for experienced…

This study explored the effects of a reciprocal teaching intervention designed to enhance the lecture comprehension skills of college students. Forty low-verbal ability students and 40 high-verbal ability students (as measured by SAT scores) were chosen for the study and randomly assigned to experimental or control groups. The experimental groups…

This paper describes and evaluates a new type of multiple-choice test question that is relatively easy to construct and that challenges students' understandings of biological concepts. The questions involve a small narrative of scientific text that students must evaluate for accuracy. These are termed "You are the Teacher" questions because the…

This study aims at understanding how the use of different reading activities affects readers' comprehension of short stories. Forty-seven students with an advanced level of English proficiency participated in the study where a quasi-experimental research design was pursued. The experimental and control groups of students completed different sets…

This paper is an essay on the discursive politics of education. Data from a small study, combined with a review of the related literature, suggest that the overarching concept "community" lacks coherence when used in online education. At least three contrasting forms of connection can be discerned: communion among participants, exchange…

The 2006 Central States Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (CSC), a joint conference with the Illinois Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, celebrated languages of the world in the classroom and in the community. This volume of the CSC "Report" is the companion volume for the 2005 CSC "Report," "The…