Students often fail to write effective synthesis essays that compare multiple sources across common intersecting categories. Instead, they compose flawed essays that focus primarily on one source and then add a few ideas from other sources (patchwriting); report ideas from all sources in a disjointed fashion (tag-all writing); or draw from one…

An incubation effect occurs when taking a break from a problem helps solvers arrive at the correct solution more often than working on it continuously. The forgetting-fixation account, a popular explanation of how incubation works, posits that a break from a problem allows the solver to forget the incorrect path to the solution and finally access…

Seven investigations of modeling as a teaching technique are reviewed in this paper. Children in the individual projects varied, but included Anglo-Americans and Mexican-Americans from the kindergarten, and second, third and fifth grades. Modeling effects were examined in the following areas of teaching concern: (1) concept formation, transfer and…