This paper presents the design of Idea Thread Mapper (ITM), a timeline-based collective knowledge-mapping tool that interoperates with Knowledge Forum and potentially other learning platforms. Using ITM, students engage in collaborative, metacognitive conversations to identify “juicy” topics that have emerged from their knowledge-building discourse, as their communal focuses, and review ideas a...

In recent years, intelligent conversational agents have been used with some level of effectiveness as dynamic support for collaborative learning in online chat. The classroom discourse community offers insights from analysis of effective classroom discussion facilitation practices that might productively inspire the design of such facilitator agents. In this paper, we evaluate one such conversa...

In this article, we examine how, through discourse processes, a third grade teacher and her students come to situationally define science in their classroom. The teacher’s use of particular discursive strategies promoted student talk, thus providing opportunities for students to learn about science through the exploration of a set of anomalous results in a life science experiment. Drawing from ...

This paper reports on one teacher’s attempts to teach critical algebra understandings to a Year 9 class in ways that engage the students and help them to develop positive perceptions of their ability to learn algebra in a “rigorous and symbolic way”. This paper describes a 6week algebra intervention based upon connecting concrete representations with symbolic expressions and equations through t...

This study attempts to examine Iranian English language teachers’ perception towards the use of discourse markers (DMs) in the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classroom. It is the contention of this study that past research studies have not paid sufficient attention to how teachers perceive the use of discourse markers in the English language classroom. This research extends on Fung’s (2011...

In Chapter 1 I introduced the principles of CA methodology in relation to ordinary conversation, whereas chapter 2 introduced an institutional discourse perspective. In this chapter I apply these principles and this perspective to the institutional setting of the L2 classroom and to the organisation of turn-taking and sequence in particular. The overall argument of this chapter is that there is...