While concerns around minority ethnic students and underachievement have attracted considerable attention in educational research, such as in England, few studies have examined those who excel, except as reference to justify the equity of the established system. This paper explores the educational success of British Chinese and Indian students,…

Studies have shown that electronic discussion can be used effectively to teach critical thinking and can achieve greater understanding. The use of online discussions is common in polytechnics and universities, and many schools in Singapore have begun to introduce online forums for discussion beyond the classroom. This research investigates lower…

This action research study explored the effects of an intervention linking both culture and citizenship in a tenth-grade English language class, and aimed at finding evidence of intercultural communicative competence (ICC) skills through the writing of narrative texts in English. Participants were 75 tenth-grade students, between the ages of 14…

Ambiguity in group discussions as a resource for communication is studied. How students, aged 13-15 years, elaborate on the concept energy through dialogue is described. Group interviews were conducted with 15 hearing and 20 deaf students. Three probes were used to initiate discussions on different meanings of energy. The results show that the…

This empirical study examined teacher self-reported participation (using or not using) and engagement (posting or lurking) in the online Advanced Placement (AP) Teacher Communities (APTC) coinciding with the redesigned AP Biology, Chemistry, and Physics exams and curricula. Prior analyses indicated that APTC participation has positive, direct…

The author argues that in order to create space for authentic multicultural engagement in the face of Eurocentric norms, teachers should form discussion groups that follow five basic guidelines: engage, don't enrage; be comfortable with negative emotion; watch for and change unproductive language; talk about everything; and engage in classroom…

Many studies have identified web-based cooperative learning as an increasingly popular educational paradigm with potential to increase learner satisfaction and interactions. However, peer-to-peer interaction often suffers barriers owing to a failure to explore useful social interaction information in web-based cooperative learning environments.…

Middle school librarian Susan Grigsby believes strongly in teaching independence in book selection, and has been able to back up her belief by putting programs in place that provide evidence to show her administrators how fostering independence works. She spends time creating personal bibliographies for her students based on an interest survey.…

Despite the fact that foreign language speaking anxiety is a common phenomenon in the teaching of English as a foreign language in Greece, teachers do not always identify anxious students, and often attribute their unwillingness to participate in speaking tasks to factors such as lack of motivation, or low performance. This article aims to…

Scholars have argued for reading and discussing children's and young adult literature containing lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and/or questioning (LGBTQ) characters and related themes with youths. Yet, we know very little about how to do this among LGBTQ people and their allies. This study examined 18 transcripts of talk from a literature…

This paper describes empirical research examining secondary school teachers' conceptions of student information literacy and reflects on the implications for the development of information-literate students. The research was designed to be practitioner centred, focusing on curriculum-based information activities and the student learning process…

Past research into the use of video for professional development has failed to problematise or theorise sufficiently the role of the discussion facilitator. It has been reported consistently that it can be hard or take time to establish norms for discussion of video but little has been said about reasons why, or the role of the discussion…

An increasing number of high needs high school students (defined as students with little or no parent support, first generation potential college students, or students living with someone other than their biological parents) are graduating from high school, but not attending a post-secondary institution. This study focused on the effects that a…

The purpose of this article is to investigate the concept of "texts" and how the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) affords teachers opportunities to implement media literacy education, in turn providing developmentally and culturally responsive middle level practice and promoting 21st century skills. This has implications for middle…

In this article, we address the methodological implications of analysing online discussion boards with a focus on participants' changing identities. More specifically, we propose the use of a Communities of Practice framework as a heuristic method for considering how participants' contributions to online discussion play a role in changing who they…