This article describes the problem of detecting the student mental models, i.e. students' knowledge states, during the self-regulatory activity of prior knowledge activation in MetaTutor, an intelligent tutoring system that teaches students self-regulation skills while learning complex science topics. The article presents several approaches to…

A central goal of the learning sciences is to discover principles that determine the optimal amount of instructional assistance to support robust learning (Koedinger & Aleven, 2007). We examined learning outcomes from providing and withholding stepwise instructional explanations as students studied worked examples and solved physics problems. We…

The College-Level Examination Program® (CLEP®) is an exam program consisting of 33 exams in five subject areas that typically correspond to single-semester courses, but some correspond to full-year or two-year courses. CLEP exams offer students the opportunity to receive college course credit for learning that has already occurred outside of the…

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of Promoting Acceleration of Comprehension and Content Through Text intervention implemented with 11th-grade students enrolled in U.S. History classes. Using a within-teacher randomized design, the study was conducted in 41 classes (23 treatment classes) with 14 teachers providing the…

This study examines the efficacy of a multimodal online bilingual dictionary based on cognitive linguistics in order to explore the advantages and limitations of explicit multimodal L2 vocabulary learning. Previous studies have examined the efficacy of the verbal and visual representation of words while reading L2 texts, concluding that it…

As policy-makers contemplate expanding preschool opportunities for low-income children, one possibility is to fund two, rather than one year of Head Start for children at ages 3 and 4. Another option is to offer one year of Head Start followed by one year of pre-k. We ask which of these options is more effective. We use data from the Oklahoma…

English Learners experience challenges related to comprehension of science text particularly at the high school level. The language of science differs significantly from that of conversation and expository text. Students benefit from collaborative interpretation of readings. Additionally, there appears to be a need to train adolescents in the oral…

This study examines how community-based mandated reporters understand and interpret "reasonable suspicion", the standard threshold for mandated reporting of suspected child abuse. Respondents were asked to identify the probability necessary for "suspicion of child abuse" to constitute "reasonable suspicion". Data were analyzed for internal…

Previous studies have reported that students employed different problem solving approaches when presented with the same task structured with different representations. In this study, we explored and compared students' strategies as they attempted tasks from two topical areas, kinematics and work. Our participants were 19 engineering students…

We studied student learning in the MOOC 8.MReV Mechanics ReView, run on the edX.org open source platform. We studied learning in two ways. We administered 13 conceptual questions both before and after instruction, analyzing the results using standard techniques for pre- and posttesting. We also analyzed each week's homework and test questions in…

Prior knowledge is a very important part of teaching and learning, as it affects how instructors and students interact with the learning materials. In general, tests are used to assess students' prior knowledge. Nevertheless, conventional testing approaches usually assign only an overall score to each student, and this may mean that students are…

This study examines the use of Spanish as the language of instruction with Spanish dominant EL students in a 9th grade Algebra 1 classroom. The study documents conceptions of mathematical symbols at the start and at the end of the academic year of two groups of students; one receiving primary language instruction and another receiving sheltered…

This study is aimed at investigating the relationships among students' relevant prior knowledge, meaningful learning orientation, reasoning ability, self-efficacy, locus of control, attitudes toward biology and achievement with the human circulatory system (HCS) using the learning cycle (LC) and the traditional classroom setting. The study was…

This study aims to compare and evaluate the learning ability and performance differences between two groups of students undergoing project-based learning (PjBL), with one group having prior PjBL experience, while the other group is being freshly exposed to PjBL. More specifically, it examines if there are significant differences in knowledge…

Few studies have focused specifically on the role that language plays in learning chemistry. We report here an investigation into the ability of language comprehension measures to predict performance in university introductory chemistry courses. This work is informed by theories of language comprehension, which posit that high-skilled…