Many teachers have designed lessons for students who will be working in groups to discuss and solve a problem. After investing time in constructing an interesting problem, creating strategically designed groups, and introducing the problem carefully, teachers may be left wondering how to help students collaborate to make sense of mathematical…

Professional learning communities (PLCs) provide an increasingly common structure for teachers' professional development. The effectiveness of PLCs depends on the content and quality of the participants' discourse. This dissertation was conducted to add to an understanding of the science content needed to prepare to teach science, and the…

In this article, Leslie Duhaylongsod, Catherine E. Snow, Robert L. Selman, and M. Suzanne Donovan describe the principles behind the design of curricular units that offer disciplinary literacy support in the subject of history for middle school students who represent a wide range of reading levels, and for their teachers, whose own subject matter…

This study reports on an analysis of students' textbook task-solving in Swedish upper secondary school. The relation between types of mathematical reasoning required, used, and the rate of correct task solutions were studied. Rote learning and superficial reasoning were common, and 80% of all attempted tasks were correctly solved using such…

The purpose of this study was to interpret students' participation in terms of social and argumentation norms to improve understanding of social interaction in scientific argumentation. Therefore, the study sought to identify social and argumentation norms formed in group argumentation and to explore changes in students' participation as lessons…

This article aims to describe a type of formative assessment, MAP Classroom Challenge, which has been introduced in mathematics classrooms in recent years. MAP, or the Mathematics Assessment Project Classroom Challenges (formerly known as Formative Assessment Lessons), are developed by teams of math educators from the Shell Centre for Mathematical…

In this article, Leslie Duhaylongsod, Catherine E. Snow, Robert L. Selman, and M. Suzanne Donovan describe the principles behind the design of curricular units that offer disciplinary literacy support in the subject of history for middle school students who represent a wide range of reading levels, and for their teachers, whose own subject matter…

Recent conceptualizations of science literacy, a key aim of contemporary science education, suggest defining it as a function of actual uses of science in daily life. We characterize expressions of science literacy in online authentic public discourse, using content analysis of a year's worth of widely-read Israeli online news site coverage of…

In this study, we examine the design process for a visual learning analytics (VLA) approach in addition to its effect on developing students' epistemic understanding of discourse and relationships to promote knowledge-building inquiry. Over a 3-month period, an experimental class of secondary school students took a visual arts course using a…

The study of interactions regarding on-line environments for education is an area of research that has being developing during the last years in order to know the type of interactions that take place in discussion forums. Interactions analysis is important in order to know and to understand knowledge construction process in a virtual space.…

In scientific arguments, claims must have meaning that extends beyond the immediate circumstances of an investigation. That is, claims must be generalised in some way. Therefore, teachers facilitating classroom argumentation must be prepared to support students' efforts to construct or criticise generalised claims. However, widely used…

Life Orientation teachers play a critical role in the teaching and learning of sexuality education in South African schools. Using an experiential participatory approach with 125 teachers in the Motheo district, Free State, I explored three questions: What messages did the teachers learn about sex and sexuality? How do these messages inform the…

This paper uses quantitative analytics to study talk-based participation in 100 mathematics classrooms across one racially diverse urban school district in the USA. Using the EQUIP observation tool and hierarchical linear modeling, we characterize the quantity and quality of participation for students across 3025 coded turns, by race and gender.…

This article describes an enquiry into whether role models in science have an effect on ethnic minority engagement and aspirations. It discusses whether incorporating scientists from across the globe into lessons could have a positive impact on ethnic minority and white pupils. Pupils at a Sheffield school were introduced to scientists from across…

Education for Sustainable Development has been discussed as problematic, as a top down directive promoting an--"indoctrinating" education. The concept of the intertwined dimensions (economic, social-cultural, and environmental) of sustainable development is seen both as an opportunity and as a limitation for pluralistic views of…