This study investigated the kinds of knowledge and strategies beginning second-language readers used when reading texts to build their own consistent patterns of meaning and experience. Specifically, it looked at how readers' knowledge grew, where their ideas originated, and when and how their ideas were used. Subjects were five college students…

This study investigated the role of problem structure and metacognitive control in the analogical transfer of performance of 40 13- and 14-year-old gifted and highly gifted math students. Average and above average 16-, 17-, and 18-year-olds served as comparison groups. Students were given three algebra problems with solutions, followed by two…

Proposes the use of procedural task analysis as a tool to assess a person's mental processes during problem solving in science education research. Uses transcriptions of videotape or audiotape problem-solving sessions to identify students' knowledge structures and misconceptions. (MDH)

Many current efforts to develop large-scale science assessments involve hands-on tasks because of their presumed power to elicit and measure scientific reasoning skills. An analysis of the processes in which students engage while responding to such assessment is needed in order to discover the specific forms of reasoning that tasks elicit. This…

How people evaluate primary and secondary sources when considering historical questions was studied by asking eight historians and eight high school seniors to think aloud while reviewing written and pictorial documents about the Battle of Lexington. Differences between the groups are discussed concerning cognitive processes and beliefs about…

Metacognitive activities were studied through the verbalizations of students during a learning process, to study the differences in the performance of good and poor students. The moment of verbalization, either at prompting marks or without prompts, and the instruction in verbalization, either directed or non-directed, were variables. Thirty-two…

This study is the fifth in a series of reports from the Reading-to-Write Project, a collaborative study of students' cognitive processes at one critical point of entry into academic performance. This part of the study examines the ways in which college students interpret and negotiate an assignment that calls for reading to write. Subjects, 17…

The cognitive processes students use in doing the 1996 science assessment of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) were studied using two booklets from the 1993 NAEP science field test. Blocks of items from these booklets, a hands-on task block and either a conceptual/problem solving block or a theme block, were administered to 16…

How do some students extract complex information from advanced reading materials while others struggle to find the meaning of even simple passages? What characteristics do strategic readers exhibit that others don't possess? Unlocking the cognitive strategies of exceptional readers means finding ways to teach every student to read strategically,…

In order to probe the relationship between reading strategies and comprehension monitoring strategies and how they function to help readers in comprehension process, the present study utilizes think-aloud and retrospective verbal reports to examine 20 EFL readers' performances in reading texts. The results reveal that the engagement of reading…

A 2-year study at the University of Sherbrooke (Quebec) investigated the changes in six medical students' clinical reasoning processes as they participated in a problem-based learning (PBL) curriculum. In each year, students performed a think-aloud protocol with two medical case problems to solve, one in cardiology and one in urology. In the…

This paper explores the development of preservice student teachers' development of reflection, in the context of a teacher education course in which the teacher educator explicitly attempted to model reflective practice. Modeling took place through open access to the teacher educator's journal and through "thinking aloud" in class about…

A series of partial studies aimed at understanding how much progress students can make in 1 year of second language study are described. The first concerns Swedish university students in their first year studying Spanish as a third language in higher education. Students were tested and interviewed for their perceptions of their language ability…

Theoretical tools from cognitive science were used to put together a framework for a fine-grained theory of how students learn elementary algebra in the classroom. Developing the framework included assessing the shortcomings of current models, evaluating whether unified theories of cognition can be adapted for learning mathematics in the…

This study examined students' active roles in constructing knowledge when learning new information in the domain of biological evolution. A computer-based connectionist methodology was developed to provide a way to present students with new information while the experimenter provides probe statements congruent with or contradictory to the…