A core element of student-teacher partnerships, a form of student participation, is their dialogical nature. However, little research attention has been paid to communication in this context. Therefore, this study aims to gain an in-depth understanding of their deliberative communication patterns. Seventeen deliberative episodes, derived from two…

This study examined the mathematical learning opportunities provided to emergent bilinguals (EBs) through their participation in whole class discussions in an elementary classroom. Positioning theory (Harré & van Langenhove, 1999) was used to examine a third-grade monolingual teacher's positioning acts and related storylines across two years.…

A range of studies into the efficacy of online discussion forums is available, and this study seeks to add to the body of evidence around students' experiences of using online discussion forums within a distance learning context. The Open University (OU) is still the UK's largest provider of distance higher education. OU distance learners are…

Background: This study is concerned with the ways that patterns of student participation in classroom talk are constructed, focusing on silent students who participate in whole-class conversation to a limited extent. Methods: We conducted an ethnographic survey in two ninth-grade classes. We made video recordings of the lessons and interviewed the…

Approximations of practice provide opportunities for teacher candidates (TCs) to engage in the work of teaching in situations of reduced complexity. A problem of practice for teacher educators relates to how to represent student voice in approximations to engage TCs with interactive practices in meaningful ways. In this article, we share an…

Asynchronous discussion is one of the most prevalent pedagogical strategies used in online education, yet this frequency of use has meant that its implementation has often not been supported by a robust understanding of how it should be designed and moderated to support students' learning. In particular, the literature has tended to focus on the…

The authors present findings from the first stage of research into a "home-grown" connectivist MOOC, Rhizomatic Learning: The Community is the Curriculum (Rhizo14). We compare the surface view of the MOOC that has been presented in a range of open blog posts and articles with the view from beneath the surface that we have found in data…

Educators, researchers, and policy makers increasingly recognize that participation in classroom mathematics discussions, especially engaging with others' ideas, can promote students' mathematics understanding. How teachers can promote students' high-level engagement with others' ideas, and the challenges teachers face when trying to do so, have…

One of the goals of teacher education is to prepare our citizens to communicate in a variety of ways. In our present society, communication using digital media has become essential. Although online discussions are a common component of many online courses, engaging students in online discussions has been a challenge. This study queried 86…

The use of large online discussion forums within online and distance learning continues to grow. Recent innovations in online learning such as the MOOC (massive open online course) and concomitant growth in the use of online media for the delivery of courses in traditional campus based universities provide both opportunity and challenge for online…

Engagement matters, and it is critical for student success and for community college faculty and staff who are responsible for helping students learn and achieve their goals. It is particularly critical for community colleges to find ways to engage part-time faculty who are responsible for such a significant part of most students' college…

In an increasingly digital society, educators are encouraged to use synchronous online technologies. This study attempts to explore the community of inquiry in a web conferencing system through synchronous interactions and focuses on the relationships between cognitive presence and academic achievements. Participants were teacher candidates…

Research about adolescents sharing creative writing in interest-driven online communities has suggested that teachers can play important roles in helping young writers realize the potential of online spaces. Framed by sociocultural notions of new literacies and a conceptual framework theorizing the rhetorical situation when sharing writing in…

This case study examined patterns in online communication using computer-mediated discourse analysis to better understand how teaching presence, social presence, and cognitive presence are manifested in an online learning environment. The findings indicate that study participants actively participated in the discussion. The instructor and…

Learning analytics focuses on extracting meaning from large amounts of data. One of the largest datasets in education comes from Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) that typically feature enrollments in the tens of thousands. Analyzing MOOC discussion forums presents logistical issues, resulting chiefly from the size of the dataset, which can…