Explores what is involved in the teacher's work of engaging students in producing a proof. Analyzes what teachers do to create a task in which students can produce a proof and what teachers do to get students to prove a proposition. Indicates that traditional, formal, two-column proofs place contradictory demands on teachers regarding how ideas…

Surveyed parents of students in the Houston Independent School District to determine preferences regarding immunization clinic site and preferred consent procedures for a Hepatitis B immunization program. Results indicated a significant lack of parent knowledge regarding the Hepatitis B virus. Demographic variables influenced parents' knowledge…

Studied the effects of different kinds of instructional help on the process of coherence formation from multiple representations by learners with different prior knowledge. Results for 3 groups of college students (n=87) show that directive help is effective for recall performance because of its summarizing and repeating function. (SLD)

Explored procedures to detect test takers using item preknowledge in computerized adaptive testing and suggested a Bayesian posterior log odds ratio index for this purpose. Simulation results support the use of the odds ratio index. (SLD)

A theory of acquired similarity and knowledge representation, latent semantic analysis (LSA), is presented to explain how people know as much as they do with the little information they get. LSA suggests that some domains of knowledge contain vast numbers of weak intercorrelations that amplify learning by inference. (SLD)

Compares Piaget's and Vygotsky's interpretations of transmission and transformation. Notes that differences are apparent in the preformation of knowledge, availability of a third alternative to nature and culture, and unity and identity in social interaction. Vygotsky was concerned about the novel transformation of the learner; Piaget, with the…

Two experiments examined young children's use of the familiarity principle when learning language. Found that even 2-year-olds successfully identified the referent of a proper name as the individual with whom the speaker was familiar. However, only 5-year-olds reliably succeeded at determining the individual with whom the speaker was familiar…

Examined faculty advisor perspectives on faculty-student advising interactions. Results included that advisors' knowledge of advising and their preparation contribute to advising success, and that advisors have a concern that the time and importance of good advising are not sufficiently recognized by upper-administrative personnel. (EV)

Interviewed 216 students in kindergarten through grade 3 about the economics of meeting families' needs for shelter. Responses indicated that most understood that people have to pay for shelter, but most were vague about renting apartments or mortgages. Discusses findings in reference to curriculum and instruction in the early grades. (SLD)

Trained 10 undergraduate psychology students to have the knowledge needed to solve 5 multiple choice problems on descriptive regression analysis and asked them to think aloud while attempting to solve the problems. Analysis of responses shows that failure to select relevant information in the text, failure to retrieve relevant propositional…

Measured substance abuse treatment professionals' knowledge, attitudes, and practices regarding the Treatment Improvement Protocol (TIP) series and the 28 TIPs. Results for 3,267 respondents in wave 1 and 1,028 in wave 2 indicate that almost half of all professionals were aware of the TIPs. Attitudes toward TIPs were positive, but professionals…

This study describes how 55 clients from a career center at a large, southeastern university anticipated using computer-assisted career guidance (CACG) systems to help in their career decision making and problem solving. Responses to a cued and a free response survey indicated that clients' most frequent anticipations included increased career…

Four experiments examined 6-year-olds' performance on intentionality stories and one false belief story. Children answered according to their own knowledge in an intentional context, even though they responded by choosing a picture to insert into a protagonist's thought bubble rather than reporting the belief verbally. Children could correctly…

The purpose of this study was to determine the training needs of certified rehabilitation counselors practicing in a variety of settings by identifying knowledge areas perceived by counselors as important for which they also reported limited preparation levels. Results of the analysis revealed 23 knowledge areas in which a critical training need…

During the process of socialization into an academic discipline, the graduate student encounters two kinds of tacit knowledge: that which grows from long experience in the discipline and that generated by the students as they make sense of their graduate study experiences. Both are important and serve as guides for action. (MSE)