This study tested a model of teacher interventions (TIs) conducted during cooperative learning to examine how they affected students' subsequent time on-task (TOT) and problem solving. TIs involved groups of ninth-grade students working on an algebra problem; videotaped lessons were transcribed and analyzed. Results showed that teachers initiated…

In this study, detailed observations and interviews from a high school student's semester-long cooperative (co-op) placement in a dental practice are used to exemplify Hung's theoretical approach to understanding situated learning. Using Hung's theory of epistemological appropriation in an analysis of the co-op supervisor's regulatory behaviors…

Persuasion is an interactive process through which a given message alters individuals' perspectives by changing the knowledge, beliefs, or interests that underlie those perspectives. Although persuasion is seen as central to effective teaching and learning, there is still much to understand about the characteristics of learners, texts, and tasks…

Most pragmatic responses to school violence seek to assign individual blame and to instill individual responsibility in students. The authors of this article argue that school violence is the result of the structural violence of oppressive social conditions that force students (especially low-income, male African American and Latino students) to…

Educators and policymakers increasingly pursue programs that aim to strengthen democracy through civic education, service learning, and other pedagogies. Their underlying beliefs, however, differ. This article calls attention to the spectrum of ideas about what good citizenship is and what good citizens do that are embodied in democratic education…

In May 2000, a class action lawsuit on behalf of California's public school students, Williams v. State of California, was filed in state court in an effort to make the state address inequities in its public schools. The central issue of the case was students' access to the "bare essentials" of public education: qualified teachers, current…

This article examines whether performance-driven educational accountability policy enhances or hinders equity. Combining data from state policy surveys, F-33, SASS, and NAEP, the article shows that during the 1990s, the states did not address racial and socioeconomic disparities in school resources and failed to narrow the achievement gaps among…

Citywide constructs such as "West Side" or "South Side" are spatial codes that result from more than the informal conversations of city residents. This article shows how elementary school educators in one U.S. metropolitan school district participated in the production of a local knowledge of the East Side and West Side space and individual. It…

Discourse analysis of interaction in a course on language and literacy development elucidates and exemplifies how preschool teachers constructed new knowledge that can be assumed to contribute to the improved literacy instruction observed in their classrooms. An analytic framework rooted in sociocultural theory and interactional sociolinguistic…

This study used a diagnostic testing approach to compare the mathematics achievement of eighth-grade students across a sample of 20 countries, analyzing data from the Third International Math and Science Study-Revised (TIMSS-R, 1999). Using the rule-space method, student mastery was measured on 23 specific content knowledge and processing…

This article describes both the process and products of a cooperative inquiry project between two educational researchers--one from literacy education and one from mathematics education. The collaboration took place in an undergraduate, inquiry-based mathematics classroom in which the researchers sought to develop a shared vision of learning and…

A group of Israeli high school students (h = 11) from two socially distinct schools read aloud a textbook account of a 1920 bloody encounter between Jews and Arabs. The study aimed at examining the relation between the textbook account and the students' formation of historical perceptions. Prior to reading the textbook excerpts, students wrote…

We describe an elaboration of an empirical cognitive model of reflection (McAlpine, Weston, Beauchamp, Wiseman, & Beauchamp, 1999). Specifically, we explain 2 fundamental constructs in the model that were previously less well understood: goal and type of reflection.

Research to date has demonstrated that networking can be an effective strategy for supporting meaningful learning. However, studies have shown that learners encounter difficulties using it. In an attempt to understand and thus reduce these difficulties, this study examined learners' underlying cognitive processes and activities while networking.…

We investigated the impact of introducing college students to complex adaptive systems on their subsequent mental models of evolution compared to those of students taught in the same manner but with no reference to complex systems. The students' mental models (derived from similarity ratings of 12 evolutionary terms using the pathfinder algorithm)…