Globally, school systems are pressed to engage in large-scale school improvement. In the United States and other countries, school district central offices and other local governing agencies often engage with external organizations and individuals to support such educational change efforts. However, initiatives with external partners are not…

A commonly held belief among educators, researchers, and students is that high-quality texts are easier to read than low-quality texts, as they contain more engaging narrative and story-like elements. Interestingly, these assumptions have typically failed to be supported by the literature on writing. Previous research suggests that higher quality…

One issue of interest to practitioners and researchers in science centres concerns what meanings visitors are making from their interactions with exhibits and how they make sense of these experiences. The research reported in this study is an exploratory attempt, therefore, to investigate this process by using video clips and still photographs of…

Prior research has established that peer tutors can benefit academically from their tutoring experiences. However, although tutor learning has been observed across diverse settings, the magnitude of these gains is often underwhelming. In this review, the authors consider how analyses of tutors' actual behaviors may help to account for variation in…

There are two dominant approaches to understanding human memory, one in the tradition of Ebbinghaus, the other in the tradition of Bartlett. The former approach views learning as the formation of associations, while the latter views memory as the process of reconstruction of fragments based on prior knowledge. These positions are often considered…

A study with 18 deaf high school students found that skills that actually contribute to reading proficiency included use of prior text information, prior knowledge, reading speed and consistency, use of active memory for function words and inflections, and correct processing of relative clauses and the passive voice. Instructional implications are…

Presents and develops a general model of the nature of a learning system and a classification for learning systems. Highlights include the relationship between artificial intelligence and cognitive psychology; computer-based instructional systems; intelligent instructional systems; and the role of the learner's knowledge base in an intelligent…

Examines development of event memory by determining how personally experienced events with two types of structure were reported by kindergartners and adults. Events in making and playing with clay were organized causally and temporally. Results show that adults and children used a goal-based hierarchical structure to remember events, although use…

A study was conducted at Texas Tech University to determine whether significant changes had occurred in the entry level computer knowledge and attitudes of students enrolling in College of Education undergraduate computer literacy courses over a 3-year period, and to determine any implications such changes might have for planners of these courses.…

Although the distinction between verbal ability and spatial ability is fundamental in all models of human abilities, differences in the relative strengths of verbal and spatial abilities have failed to show consistent interactions with instructional treatments. This study investigated the hypothesis that spatial tests measure different abilities…

This study investigated whether computer science educational background makes secondary students more adept at using word processing capabilities, and compared computer science and non-computer science students' writing improvement with word processing use. Computer science students used more sophisticated program features but student writing did…

Reports on a study designed to investigate loudness judgments of 30 musician and 30 nonmusician listeners in response to performed dynamic changes within a musical context. Finds that musician subjects indicated a significantly smaller magnitude of dynamic change than did nonmusician subjects. (CFR)

Compares preferential ratings of art music among 100 music majors and 100 nonmusic majors. Finds that music majors' preference ratings were significantly higher than those of the nonmajors. Also finds that Likert-scale ratings of nonmajors using the Continuous Response Digital Interface were higher than those using a static measure. (CFR)

Experiences with an instructional strategy which enabled students to build for themselves the appropriate scientific concept for energy are described. This was done by pupil/teacher dialogue in small groups, in which students were expected to create for themselves a "generalization mechanism" based on their own frameworks. (KR)

This study, with 48 students (including 16 eighth graders with learning disabilities (LD), 16 age level peers, and 16 reading level peers), found that all groups, but especially LD students, benefited from experimenter activation of prior knowledge on reading comprehension tasks testing inferential reading ability. Experimenter activation of prior…