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The focus of this study was on how students created and shared humor in an online multimodal learning environment. Across two semesters of a graduate course on psycholinguistics in education, 28 students posted 1006 pins on a social-networking webpage (Pinterest) that were subjected to a multimodal content analysis. The Pinterest boards provided a dialogic space for students to engage in on-going collaborative exploration of notable ways of using language in authentic sociocultural spaces. Many examples of humorous uses of language attested to students’ playful and creative application of course concepts. Through participants’ comments on pins and multimodal aspects of pins that transformed the nature of student-shared examples, some pins, originally not intended to be funny, came to represent examples of humor. Students took risks in pinning what they envisioned as possibly misconceived or even provocative content in pursuit of refining their understanding of psycholinguistic concepts.

This study is part of a longitudinal, multiphase study on development of literacy mentoring practices particularly with regard to the cooperating teacher. This paper reports on the findings from the first year of the study during which cooperating teachers (CT) participated in a master's program focused on coaching and mentoring while mentoring preservice teachers completing their elementary education degree inside a literacy specialization cohort. Drawing on observational and interview data and employing an activity theory framework, we examine the ways the CTs' involvement in a community of peers and faculty who met regularly in courses was instrumental their appropriation of a model of mentoring known as coaching with CARE. Analysis indicated that coursework, particularly two courses taken during the first year, offered multiple spaces that functioned as ways for participants to work through tensions that arose as the CTs moved across activity systems (from their coaching community at the university to their individual schools situated within area school districts). Specifically, these spaces afforded opportunities to work through understandings of the underlying theories and concepts related to reflective coaching, to share their experiences and beginning enactments of the coaching model, and to coach one another as they interacted around videotaped coaching conferences.

A substantial body of research has collectively concluded that encouraging students to draw flexibly on multiple aspects of their linguistic repertoires is positively associated with developing bilingualism, metalinguistic awareness, and academic skills. However, most bilingual education programs—including transitional and dual-language—limit, discourage, and/or stigmatize such practices. This study examines literature discussion in a fifth-grade bilingual education classroom, in which the teacher valued, supported, and facilitated hybrid language practices. The findings illuminate the ways in which the teacher and students flexibly used their linguistic and cultural resources to understand the text content and language.