The prealgebra curriculum presents many opportunities for encouraging students to justify their inferences. Requiring students to communicate clearly the reasoning behind their solutions, with appropriate mathematical language and notation, helps lay the groundwork for future, proof-based mathematics courses. Prealgebra students can even be…

Current theories of text processing say little about how authors' narrative choices, including the introduction of small mysteries, can affect readers' narrative experiences. Gerrig, Love, and McKoon (2009) provided evidence that 1 type of small mystery--a character introduced without information linking him or her to the story--affects readers'…

In many situations, readers are asked to learn from multiple documents. Many studies have found that evaluating the trustworthiness and usefulness of document sources is an important skill in such learning situations. There has been, however, no direct evidence that attending to source information helps readers learn from and interpret a…

This article presents the author's response to the commentary essays by Charles Alderson and Fred Davidson on "Demystifying a Q-matrix for making diagnostic inferences about L2 reading skills" (Jang, 2009). The author stresses that their commentaries provides vital perspectives on the challenges to pushing the boundaries of current testing…

Evidence-based practices represent an important advance in how effective instructional practices are conceptualized and identified, which has the potential to improve the educational outcomes of children with disabilities. Because parents have unique insights and knowledge regarding their children, special educators should collaborate with parents…

Evidence-based research relevant to social work practice has grown dramatically. This article describes a method that was implemented to teach master's and doctoral social work students how to synthesize and evaluate evidence-based interventions for social work-related problems and populations. The method includes eight steps: conceptualize the…

A number of asymmetries in lexical memory emerge when monolinguals and early bilinguals are compared to (relatively) late second language (L2) learners. Their study promises to provide insight into the internal processes that both support and ultimately limit L2 learner achievement. Generally, theory building in L2 and bilingual lexical memory has…

This study describes how intermediate-level first language English readers of Russian as a second language deploy lexical inferencing and other strategies when reading informational texts. Fifth-semester students of Russian performed think-alouds while reading two texts; one written for the general adult reader, and the other meant for school-age…

We examined student attitudes toward a team-based learning method known as the readiness assurance process encompassing team exams to model how student satisfaction is initially shaped and subsequently changed over time as a function of scholastic performance and perceived development of professional skills (PS). We found that students were…

What is formative assessment? Why do we do it and what do students gain? Formative assessment is not a one-time event. It is not the product or end result of a set of well-defined steps. Rather, formative assessment is a process identified in this resource as INFORMative assessment when it is a collection of strategies that engage teachers and…

Cognitive diagnostic assessment (CDA) is a new theoretical framework for psychological and educational testing that is designed to provide detailed information about examinees' strengths and weaknesses in specific knowledge structures and processing skills. During the last three decades, more than a dozen psychometric models have been developed…

Two studies tested the applicability of Weiner's (1995, 1996, 2001, 2006) attributional model of social conduct to roadway environments. This model highlights the role of inferences of responsibility after making causal judgments for social transgressions. Study 1 employed written scenarios where participants were asked to imagine themselves…

The present study investigated the development of inferencing in five to seven year old children. The subjects consisted of thirty typically developing children of five, six and seven years, distributed into three groups of ten. Four sets of material were prepared and for each two types of questions were constructed. The questions being of literal…

Researchers, policy makers, and practitioners share a sincere interest in improving the human condition. Academics may be tempted to fault irrationality, ideology, or ignorance for the failure of research to inform policy and practice more powerfully, but policy makers and practitioners want academics to tell them "what works" in order to find a…

Substantial controversy has surrounded the concept of best practices (BPs) in counseling; in particular, the consequences of deriving practice guidelines from empirically supported treatments (ESTs). Criticisms of EST methodology, assumptions, and findings are summarized, and implications for core counseling values, including multiculturalism, are…