The paper is focused on students of Mathematical methods in economics at the Czech university of life sciences (CULS) in Prague. The idea is to create a model of students' progress throughout the whole course using the Markov chain approach. Each student has to go through various stages of the course requirements where his success depends on the…

This review summarizes a series of experiments aimed at answering the question whether the hippocampus in rats can serve as an animal model of amnesia. It is recognized that a comparison of the functions of the rat hippocampus with human hippocampus is difficult, because of differences in methodology, differences in complexity of life experiences,…

This case study of the Department of Communication at the University of Maryland demonstrates the need to consider course sequencing in the communication curriculum. The investigation assessed whether the order in which undergraduates took courses predicted grade performance. Students' (N = 6,166) grade data from earlier courses were used to…

We discuss an emerging program of research on a particular aspect of mathematics learning, students' learning through their own mathematical activity as they engage in particular mathematical tasks. Prior research in mathematics education has characterized learning trajectories of students by specifying a series of conceptual steps through which…

This article presents what is possibly the first English translation of a 1930 manuscript related to Vygotsky's work (probably written by Vygotsky himself). This manuscript, the Zalkind Summary, is a five-point summary of his presentation to the First All-Union Congress on the Study of Human Behaviour in Leningrad in January 1930. This article…

We report a study that examines whether the presentation of irrelevant, ordinal information at central fixation interacts with the allocation of attention beyond fixation. Previous research has demonstrated that number perception influences the allocation of spatial attention, such that the presentation of a spatially nonpredictive number at…

Recent methodological advances have allowed researchers to address confounds in the measurement of task-switch costs in task-switching performance by dissociating cue switching from task switching. For example, in the transition-cuing procedure, which involves presenting cues for task transitions rather than for tasks, cue transitions (cue…

A method of organizing studies on sequencing problems in mathematics according to a theoretical model based on characteristics of empirical science is explained. The conceptual framework underlying eight studies that follow this article in JRME (SE 508 022 through SE 508 029) is discussed and a brief overview of each study is given. (DT)

Findings obtained by providing rats with a single fixed series of events, A-B-C-..., often are equally compatible with three alternative serial learning interpretations: that the signal for items is (A) their position in the series (position view), (B) the prior item of the series (chaining view), and (C) one, two, or more prior items of the…

The article presents numerical procedures for the validation and comparison of hierarchically organized curricula. Examples of specific hypotheses one should test, and calculations of five statistics for testing these hypotheses are given (consistency ratio, adequacy ratio, inverse consistency ratio, inverse adequacy ratio, and completeness…

One notable line of inquiry, aspects of which date back to the early 1980s, involves the design and implementation not of long-term curricula, but of topic-oriented sequences for teaching science. One distinguishing characteristic of a teaching-learning sequence (TLS) is its inclusion in a gradual research-based volutionary process aiming at…

A study of variations in pupils' prior knowledge for their influence on the sequencing mode of text presentation found prior knowledge reduced the effect of size of sequencing procedures. A second experiment comparing performance of pupils with low prior knowledge level using websequence and linear sequence found webteaching was superior.…

Following a brief rationale for teaching research skills in secondary school social studies, this bulletin is organized into two major parts. Rather than on writing the paper as an end in itself, emphasis is on the basic purpose of research procedures. Part one contains directions for students to follow in developing research projects. Ten steps…

Research on which aspects of the instructional process are most appropriately placed under learner control is reviewed. The review covers representative experiments from the 1960's in brief and experiments at the University of Texas from 1970 to 1973 in more detail. Although it appears that learner control can be helpful in mainline…