Much has been written recently about the role of talk in content-area learning, including science learning. However, there is still much to be learned about how teachers begin to engage students in the kinds of peer-to-peer conversations that help them make sense of their investigations in science and that advance their conceptual understandings.…

Using artifacts of teachers' practices, classroom observations, and interviews, we explore how 2 novice history teachers use writing in their middle school classrooms. Both teachers focused on evidence-based, interpretive writing in their preservice work, an approach promoted by their methods courses. After graduation, one teacher continued this…

The purpose of this article is to introduce a framework for understanding relationship quality between middle school students and their teachers. The framework draws on findings from 3 literatures (motivation, attachment, and sociocultural) and from analyses of a year-long case study in a rural middle school. I begin with a brief overview of the…