Tower of Hanoi has become a popular tool in cognitive and neuropsychology to assess a set of behaviors collectively referred to as executive functions. Substantial variability in performance on the Tower of Hanoi (TOH) disk-transfer task among normally functioning young adults, and potential contributions to these individual differences, were…

In this article, we examine collaborative discourse in an informal undergraduate study group in which students focus on their lecture notes. Several decades of educational research have demonstrated that collaborative groups contribute to enhanced learning, and recent work has explored how external representations--such as those that appear in…

This mixed-methods study explored the effects of student-generated visualization on middle-schoolers' science concept learning. We compared students who visualized during study time with those who did not and found that visualization as a study strategy led to students' improved test performances (p=.02). However, middle schoolers' scores on a…

Most educators agree that concepts derived from the discipline areas of physical education are important. Selecting which concepts to teach is perhaps one of the most difficult decisions that teachers with reduced program time have to make. Once teachers select the concepts, they need to plan how to teach them over a curriculum, not just over the…

Critical thinking is often seen as a universal goal of higher education but is seldom confirmed as an outcome. This study was conducted to determine whether an introductory level college leadership course that encouraged active learning increased critical thinking skills. A pre- and post-assessment of critical thinking skills was conducted using…

Colour is a common feature in computer-aided learning (CAL), though the instructional effects of screen colour are not well understood. This investigation considers the effects of different CAL study tasks with feedback on posttest performance and on posttest memory of the lesson colour scheme. Graduate students (n=68) completed a computer-based…

Walk into any primary grade music class in the U.S., and you will likely hear teacher and students singing a musical greeting, such as "Good morning boys and girls" (sol-mi-mi-sol-sol-mi) and the response "Good morning Miss Purdy" (sol-mi-mi-sol-mi-mi). Since about the 1970s, teachers have been beginning and ending music class for young children…

This project describes the trialling of a new form of cooperative learning strategy, in the form of a game known as "EcoRangers". "EcoRangers" is a multi-player game designed to run on mobile phones, written specifically for education. "EcoRangers" is one of the first, if not the world's first, instances of this…

The study undertook to identify the constructs in Approaches to Studying in a Malaysian higher education context by using factor analysis. These constructs were compared with those in other contexts. The study was undertaken in a Malaysian public university and the subjects of the study were distance learners and on-campus learners from three…

This paper briefly outlines key similarities and differences in approaches to media education in Russia and the US, followed by explication of a suggested approach to improving research on the means of introducing media education concepts to adolescents in cross-cultural public school settings. Although much has been written about the value of…

Congruent with the University of South Australia's mission to widen access, first-year students of business studies enter the university with a wide range of educational backgrounds and experiences. Previous work (Meyer & Shanahan, 1999) has revealed that such students vary considerably in their views about what learning is, and how they engage in…

The idea of metalearning was originally used by John Biggs (1985) to describe the state of 'being aware of and taking control of one's own learning'. This paper explores the concept through collaborative enquiry involving researchers and higher education teachers. An evolved conception is proposed in which metalearning is a subconcept within…

Mathematics educators frequently recommend that students use strategies for measurement estimation, such as the reference point or benchmark strategy; however, little is known about the effects of using this strategy on estimation accuracy or representations of standard measurement units. One reason for the paucity of research in this area is that…

Students' strategies for solving long division problems under a realistic mathematics approach (RME) at Dutch primary schools were categorized in two ways: (a) according to the level of how students created multiples of the divisor (chunking) to be subtracted from the dividend; and (b) according to their use, or nonuse, of schematic notation.…

Teachers need to make adaptations for writers who are struggling. In a study of interventions for written language, 20 percent of the teachers participating in the study reported that no adaptations were made for struggling writers (Graham, Harris, & Larsen, 2001). In a classroom without a research study being conducted, this number would…