It is crucial for teachers to communicate effectively about educational objectives to students, colleagues, and others in education. In 1956, Bloom developed a cognitive learning taxonomy to enhance communication between college examiners. The Bloom taxonomy consists of 6 hierarchical levels of learning (knowledge, comprehension, application,…

Proposes an automated document classification system based on the Gray code, information-theoretic considerations, and requirements of classification systems including objectivity, inclusion, linearity, and increasing distance-dissimilarity. A measure to evaluate system performance is developed, and the proposed system is compared with the Library…

Categorization in well-known natural concepts is studied using a special version of the Varying Abstraction Framework (Vanpaemel, W., & Storms, G. (2006). A varying abstraction framework for categorization. Manuscript submitted for publication; Vanpaemel, W., Storms, G., & Ons, B. (2005). A varying abstraction model for categorization. In B. Bara,…

The learning object remains an ill-defined concept, despite numerous and extensive discussion in the literature. This paper attempts to address this problem by providing a classification that potentially brings together various perspectives of what a learning object may be. Six unique types of learning objects are proposed and discussed:…

Introduction: In a standards-based school-system alignment of policy documents with standards and assessment is important. To be able to evaluate whether schools and students have reached the standards, the assessment should focus on the standards. Different models and methods can be used for measuring alignment, i.e. the correspondence between…

Many of the problems studied in cognitive science are inductive problems, requiring people to evaluate hypotheses in the light of data. The key to solving these problems successfully is having the right inductive biases--assumptions about the world that make it possible to choose between hypotheses that are equally consistent with the observed…

In a recently published study, Sloutsky and Fisher [Sloutsky, V. M., & Fisher, A.V. (2004a). When development and learning decrease memory: Evidence against category-based induction in children. "Psychological Science", 15, 553-558; Sloutsky, V. M., & Fisher, A. V. (2004b). Induction and categorization in young children: A similarity-based model.…

In this article, I propose a model to re-frame disproportionality research, which addresses key limitations in this literature. I present a brief overview of the problem and situate it in the historical context in which race and ability became intertwined. I then argue that a cultural-historical understanding of disproportionality requires…

Aims: Do college students' ratings of a professor's teaching effectiveness suggest that a professor's teaching improves with time? Does anything predict which instructors receive the highest ratings or improve the fastest? And, importantly, do the correlates of change differ across face-to-face and online courses? Methods: I used data from 10,392…

Within the historical context of the development of chemistry, Avogadro's hypothesis represents a fundamental concept: It allowed Avogadro to explain Gay-Lussac's law of combining volumes and it allowed Cannizzaro to establish a more accurate set of atomic mass values. If students are going to understand the concept of relative atomic masses and…

Cognitive diagnostic models (CDMs) model the probability of correctly answering an item as a function of an examinee's attribute mastery pattern. Because estimation of the mastery pattern involves more than a continuous measure of ability, reliability concepts introduced by classical test theory and item response theory do not apply. The cognitive…

The aim of this study was to examine the effect of instructional materials for the subject of classification of matter as solids, liquids and gases that were developed using a holistic instructional design model on student achievement. In the study a pre-test/post-test with control group experimental design was used. The study was conducted in the…

This paper reports the findings of an exploratory study concerning the development of higher-order conceptual understanding of Teaching Games for Understanding (TGfU) among physical education pre-service teachers. The development of such understandings has been seen as problematic among pre-service teachers (Randall, 2003). An analysis of the…

It is suggested that the strength of a categorical argument increases with the degree to which the conclusion and premise categories are similar to the members of the lowest level category that includes both premise and conclusion categories. (SLD)

Discussion of the prevalence of giftedness proposes a metric-based system in which each of five levels of giftedness (in each field of talent) reflects a prevalence that is one tenth that of the previous level. Advantages to the system are identified and application suggests that 30-40 percent of the population is at least mildly gifted in at…