Although not everyone needs textbooks, they still actively serve four audiences within the discipline. The four audiences that benefit from textbooks are students, instructors, the textbook sales force, and the textbook authors themselves. With a growing number of online classes where students have less and less, or even no, face time with their…

This study examined the contribution of word decoding, first-language (L1) and second-language (L2) vocabulary and prior topic knowledge to L2 reading comprehension. For measuring reading comprehension we employed two different reading tasks: Woodcock Passage Comprehension and a researcher-developed content-area reading assignment (the Global…

Instructors are continually looking for means to improve outcomes for students in online courses. This article examines the instructional design of courses to determine if consistent components implemented in a recently established online master's degree program can produce significant student outcomes. The authors detail the construction and…

This article describes a study of how students use first person pronouns in papers written for undergraduate courses in multiple disciplines. If prompted, students imitate some of the ways experts use first person to establish their authority; but just as often students use first person pronouns to express uncertainty or to reveal that they have…

The purpose of this study was to look at elementary/middle school pre-service teachers' perceptions of multicultural and diversity issues through multicultural children's literature. Nineteen pre-service teachers in a foundation of literacy course explored multicultural children's literature and involved group/class discussions and a project over…

The positive impact of family-school relationships is well documented in the literature, as is the need for teacher education to prepare teachers to work positively with diverse families. This article reports the experiences and perspectives of candidates in an elementary urban teacher preparation program in the United States as they engaged in…

This collaborative self-study examines the critical friendship of two doctoral students charged with teaching a methods course in elementary social studies. The authors formed a critical friendship in Fall 2010, initiated by participation in a teacher educator community of practice that encouraged collaboration. With limited experience in…

In this study we investigate students' ability to discern conceptual variation and the use of multiple models in genetics when reading content-specific excerpts from biology textbooks. Using the history and philosophy of science as our reference, we were able to develop a research instrument allowing students themselves to investigate the…

This paper examines the use of student planners (agendas) with elementary school students. It asks how teachers, students and parents in two classrooms engage in the literacy practice of using student planners. A literacy object originally introduced to manage schoolwork in and out of school for students with learning difficulties, planners are…

Achieving foundation-level practice behaviors to develop social work core competencies involves integrating learning across a curriculum. This article focuses on two phases of foundation-level course redevelopment aimed to support graduate students in accomplishing this outcome. The first phase involved restructuring the course to become a…

The aim of this study is to describe and analyse the writing discourse in one classroom and how students learn through studying a topic, i.e. the teaching and learning of written argument. The study takes its stance from a sociocultural perspective and is influenced by discourse analyses, new literacy studies and critical literacy (Fairclough…

Undergraduates' use of social networking sites has been well documented in both the popular press and in academic publications. Research suggests that students spend, on average, 30 minutes a day engaged in a predictable routine of social networking. Correspondingly, on the first author's previous campus, she had frequently observed many of the…

The explosion of social networks and the growing concern over privacy in the digital age--both in the United States and Europe--have provided an opportunity to introduce students to the legal risks of using social media in the workplace. This article builds on the authors' classroom experiences and provides social media scenarios and projects that…

Aaron Sorkin has a passion for words--his signature movie and television scripts are fast talking, jargon laced, word pictures that are instantly recognizable. "The Social Network," Sorkin's 2011 Academy Award Winning movie about the founding of Facebook, Inc., offers more than just witty banter; it provides an ideal teaching platform for…

Sociological imagination is a quality of mind that cannot be adopted by simply teaching students its discursive assumptions. Rather, it is a disposition, in competition with other forms of sensibility, which can be acquired only when it is practiced. Adhering to this important pedagogical assumption, students were assigned to write their…