Recent research by Swain (2000a, 2000b, 1998, 1995), Swain and Lapkin (2001, 1998, 1995) and Kowal and Swain (1997, 1994) has examined the role of collaborative tasks in focusing immersion students' attention on the need for explicit knowledge of grammatical forms and lexical items in the production (especially written) of French texts. This is…

This article defines the cultural nature and scale of change in learning consciousness that has to take place when the organizationally-based adult learner makes the transition from formal prescriptive learning practice to self-owned, self-directed learning. It articulates some of the learning-to-learn process models that introduce, accelerate,…

A major emphasis in technology education is learning the practices of designers-making informed decisions, trading off achievement of criteria against each other, working in a team, communicating ideas and results, and so on. How can one help students learn such ill-defined and open-ended skills? There have been a variety of suggestions made by…

Creativity in education often takes the form of concentrated periods of arts-based "light relief" from the rigours of the National Curriculum. In psychology, on the other hand, creativity is often associated with a dramatic moment of "illumination" in solving scientific, mathematical or practical problems. This paper explores a third approach…

This study investigated the instructional conditions required to teach students how to initiate and employ learning activities aimed at conceptual change. The CONTACT-2 strategy (a computer-assisted instructional strategy for promoting conceptual change in the domain of physical geography) served as a starting point for a training procedure aimed…

This paper investigates the error analysis thought processes of foreign language learners regarding their written examples of the language under study, suggesting that consciousness plays a part in instructed second language acquisition. The study assumed that individual learners could offer insights into interim states of their developing grammar…

The Self-Regulated Learning Inventory was developed to help researchers and teachers understand the concept of self-regulated learning and to provide a tool for identifying behaviors students need for academic success. Version One of the instrument contained 71 items representing the factors of metacognition, learning strategies, motivation,…

New conceptions of learning, analogy, and capacity have fundamentally changed scientists' view of cognitive development. New conceptions of learning help to explain how representations of the world are acquired. New models of analogical reasoning have suggested that logical inferences are often made by mapping a problem into a mental model, or…

This book assists teachers to understand why basing instructional practices on cognitive theories of instruction can better prepare students to become strategic learners. The volume synthesizes and distills findings from current research and identifies instructional components that enable teachers to implement strategy instruction in the basic…

This study investigates gender differences with regard to three factors of scientific literacy. The study involved students (N=772) in Grades 9 and 10. A 100-item multiple choice test based on National Science Education Standards was used to assess scientific literacy while gender differences were explored using analysis of variance procedures.…

This practicum was designed to incorporate critical thinking skills instruction and practice into a fourth-grade curriculum to increase fourth-grade students' ability to recognize and apply critical thinking strategies to appropriate situations. This program concentrated on the increasing of six critical thinking skills: classification, sequence…

To determine if able and disabled college student readers can be distinguished by their awareness and use of metacognitive and cognitive strategies, 36 freshmen students enrolled in a reading and study skills class were classified as either good or poor readers based on their Nelson-Denny Reading Test scores. After reading five short passages and…

Recognizing that children's spontaneous use of text structure facilitates their comprehension of expository prose, a study examined the transfer effects of graphic organizer instruction on 24 fourth grade students' ability to use top-level structure in the comprehension and recall of new content area material. Subjects were randomly assigned to…

For the purpose of promoting international cooperation in mathematics, physics, and chemistry teaching research, this first yearbook of the Finnish Association of Mathematics and Science Education Research contains articles of recent research on mathematics teaching. The contents consist of five articles in English, two in German, and one thesis…

Selections of papers from the seventeenth annual conference of the Australian Science Education Research Association are presented in this volume of Research in Science Education (RISE). A diversity of themes are addressed and include new topic areas as well as concerns that have been cited in previous issues of RISE. The papers focus on such…