Discourse comprehension involves readers or listeners in constructing mental models using local text information, global text structures, and their general knowledge of the world. An analysis of the literature on children's understanding of spoken discourse reveals that young children are capable of forming mental models from texts, but that their…

Presents design, collected data, and findings of study that deals with students' exposure and improving information-gathering procedures on students' knowledge bases in political science. (Author/ND)

Writers and writing teachers should be wary of depending on readability indexes as indicators of the difficulty of written messages. The Gunning Fog Index and the Damerst Clear Index, two readability formulas, were used to determine the readability of "A Statement of Editorial Policy" and two abstracts appearing in an issue of…

Multiple-choice items were used to measure knowledge of drug abuse among four distinct groups of college students in the Los Angeles area. No difference in knowledge was found about five aspects of drug abuse measured by subscales of the instrument. These findings suggest that knowledge about drugs is remarkably uniform, although the students…

Previous research has indicated that knowledge of the criterion group differentially affects test performance of minority group members. The effects which knowledge of the criterion group has on the test performance of eighth grade Negro and Mexican-American Ss were examined. There was no evidence that comparison with one of four norm groups…

Responses to a questionnaire revealed that regular education student teachers (N=155) and special education student teachers (N=51) perceived a need for additional training in several similar areas concerned with mainstreaming, including communication, classroom management, evaluation, and professional knowledge needs also identified in the…

A content analysis of essays written by students from Great Britain and the United States on the topic "What I have heard about Adolf Hitler" showed that today's youth have only a very superficial knowledge about the events surrounding Hitler and Nazism. (RM)

Confirms that able readers have a more well-rounded sense of story structure than disabled readers. Specifically, that able readers demonstrated an ability to tell more elaborate stories than disabled readers. (FL)

A study addressed the questions of what teachers and students do with background-concept questions in historical study, and how these questions are connected (or not) to the teaching of foreground concepts. If teachers borrow and teach reading-language arts research strategies (strategic knowledge) and integrate them into historical study, does…

Data on foreign language learning and conversational usage from 12 European Union member states (n=13,029) indicate language learning has increased considerably in 40 years. Of the most commonly learned languages (English, French, German), English has gained most, suggesting emergence as a lingua franca. One analysis gauged the probability that a…

Profiles a few of the affinities between pragmatists and scientific realists, and indicates a few dramatic differences dividing these schools of thought. Pragmatic research is driven by anticipated consequences. Scientific realists hope to find the truth about what the world is really like. (SLD)

Introduction: Physicians increasingly earn continuing medical education (CME) credits through on-line courses, but there have been few rigorous evaluations to determine their effects. The present study explores the feasibility of implementing standardized evaluation templates and tests them to evaluate 30 on-line CME courses. Methods: A time…

This study reports on a multi-year effort to create and evaluate cognitive-based curricular materials for secondary school science classrooms. A team of secondary teachers, educational researchers, and academic biomedical engineers developed a series of curriculum units that are based in biomedical engineering for secondary level students in…

The current study examined the early literacy skills of kindergartners with hearing loss who were enrolled in individual inclusion or group inclusion programs as well as those of children with typical hearing. We also examined the relationship between early literacy skills and background variables such as degree of hearing loss, type of sensory…

Health literacy is important for all adults. Because lower health literacy is associated with lower educational attainment, many adult basic and literacy education programs increasingly provide health education to low-literate adults to improve their health literacy. Using data from the 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL), this study…