The development of critical scientific literacy in primary and secondary school classrooms requires authentic inquiry with a basis in the real world. Pairing scientists with educators and employing informatics and visualization tools are two successful ways to achieve this. This article is based on rich data collected over eight years from middle…

In line with global trends, Australian educational policy emphatically recognises the need for contemporary learners to be digitally literate, with provision of "one-to-one" devices to individual learners in schools a major implementation strategy. However, without teacher commitment, the benefits of such investment in one-to-one…

In this article, the authors trace teachers' experiences while participating in an educational technology development and research project focused on the creation and use of an online writing and peer review environment. They follow teachers from their initial expectations of the program, to their response to professional development training…

This article is intended to highlight peer response discourse trends and to initiate a dialogue about the ways in which educators, and designers of educational environments, can play a central role in creating more democratic discourse in classrooms. We report on a research and development project involving education experts, computer engineers,…

Through a Foucauldian lens, this article examines the affordances and constraints of an online peer-review program in four special education English language arts classes in two New York City middle schools. Data from classroom observations, teacher interviews, and online student spaces and artifacts provide insight into the technologies of power…

The purpose of this exploratory study was to analyze the writing experiences of eighth-grade students in three social studies classrooms while using a Web 2.0 online writing workspace. Participants included one social studies teacher and 69 eighth-grade students in a selective admission public high school. Furthermore, three of the eighth-grade…

This article explores the processes of writing in science and in particular the "complex performance" of writing a scientific argument. The article explores in general terms the nature of scientific argumentation in which the author-scientist makes claims, provides evidence to support these claims, and develops chains of scientific…

Rubrics have become popular tools for assessing student writing both in classroom and standardized testing environments. Rubric construction and efficacy, however, is a topic that has been largely sidestepped in the literature and in teacher professional development. Composing an effective rubric--particularly for instructional or formative…

This article discusses a study of three Australian middle-years teachers who deployed Learning by Design principles and practice to support multiliteracies learning through students' production of digital/multimodal texts. The aim of the research was to develop an understanding of how three teachers embraced new e-learning pedagogical designs for…

This article examines the language and literacy practices of middle-school children as they worked toward constructing their own computer games using "Gamestar Mechanic," a game intended to teach them key ways of thinking and communicating germane to the discourse of game designers. It examines the changes that took place in what previous work…