Ten Australian elementary teachers' discourse and reported pedagogical practices during cooperative learning

This article describes the types of discourse 10 Australian grade 4-6 teachers used after they had been trained to embed cooperative learning in their curriculum and to use communication skills to promote students' thinking and to scaffold their learning. One audiotaped classroom social science lesson involving cooperative learning was analyzed for each teacher. We provide vignettes from 2 teachers as they worked with groups and from 2 student groups. The data from the audiotapes showed that the teachers used a range of mediated-learning behaviors in their interactions with the children that included challenging their perspectives, asking more cognitive and metacognitive questions, and scaffolding their learning. In turn, in their interactions with each other, the children modelled many of the types of discourse they heard their teachers use. Follow-up interviews with the teachers revealed that they believed it was important to set expectations for children's group behaviors, teach the social skills students needed to deal with disagreement in groups, and establish group structures so children understood what was required both from each other and the task. The teachers reported that mixed ability and gender groups worked best and that groups should be no larger than 5 students. All teachers' programs were based on a child-centered philosophy that recognized the importance of constructivist approaches to learning and the key role interaction plays in promoting social reasoning and learning.

Building learning communities to support beginning teachers use of technology

This paper reports on the early stages of a three year study that is investigating the impact of a technology-enriched teacher education program on beginning teachers' integration of computers, graphics calculators, and the internet into secondary school mathematics classrooms. Whereas much of the existing research on the role of technology in mathematics learning has been concerned with effects on curriculum content or student learning, less attention has been given to the relationship between technology use and issues of pedagogy, in particular the impact on teachers' professional learning in the context of specific classroom and school environments. Our research applies sociocultural theories of learning to consider how beginning teachers are initiated into a collaborative professional community featuring both web-based and face to face interaction, and how participation in such a community shapes their pedagogical beliefs and practices. The aim of this paper is to analyse processes through which the emerging community was established and sustained during the first year of the study. We examine features of this community in terms of identity formation, shifts in values and beliefs, and interaction patterns revealed in bulletin board discussion between students and lecturers.