This research aims at examining and analyzing the potential that textbooks in the field of Languages and Communication provide in achieving the competence: student as a critical thinker. The data on the textbooks is collected according to the Delphi report, which is used as a standardized report in available published research on the development…

In the current study, we examined how student characteristics and cognitive skills, differing levels of text complexity (cohesion, decoding, vocabulary, and syntax), and reading comprehension question types (literal, inferential, critical analysis, and reading strategy) affected different types of reading outcomes (multiple-choice reading…

Reasoning skills have been clearly related to achievement in introductory undergraduate biology, a course with a high failure rate that may contribute to dropout from undergraduate STEM majors. Existing measures are focused on the experimental method, such as generating hypotheses, choosing a research method, how to control variables other than…

Literacy is a critically important and contemporary issue for educators, scientists, and politicians. Efforts to overcome the challenges associated with illiteracy, and the subsequent development of literate societies, are closely related to those of poverty reduction and sustainable human development. In this paper, the authors examine literacy…

Methods to assess the significance of mediated effects in education and the social sciences are well studied and fall into two categories: single sample methods and computer-intensive methods. A popular single sample method to detect the significance of the mediated effect is the test of joint significance, and a popular computer-intensive method…

In two studies we use a pointing task to explore developmentally the nature of the knowledge that underlies three- and four-year-old children's ability to assign meaning to the intransitive structure. The results suggest that early in development children are sensitive to a first-noun-as-causal-agent cue and animacy cues when interpreting…

How does early social experience affect children's inferences and exploration? Following prior work on children's reasoning in pedagogical contexts, this study examined U.S. children with less experience in formal schooling and Yucatec Mayan children whose early social input is predominantly observational. In Experiment 1, U.S. 2-year-olds…

This study investigated whether children can infer category properties based on how a speaker describes an individual (e.g., saying something is a "small zib" implies that zibs are generally bigger than this one). Three- to 5-year-olds (N = 264) from a university preschool and a children's museum were tested on their ability to make this…

Although widely used, student evaluations of teaching do not address several factors that should be considered in evaluating teaching performance such as new course preparations, teaching larger classes, and inconvenient class times. Consequently, the incentive exists to avoid certain teaching assignments to achieve high SET scores while…

ASD is associated with mentalizing deficits that may correspond with atypical mirror system (MS) activation. We investigated MS activity in adults with and without ASD when inferring others' intentions using TMS-induced motor evoked potentials (MEPs) and mu suppression measured by EEG. Autistic traits were measured for all participants. Our EEG…

The use of statistics in second language acquisition (SLA) research has increased over the past 30-40 years and continues to increase in both complexity and sophistication (Gass, 2009; Loewen & Gass, 2009). The increased use of statistical procedures has drawn attention to the current state of statistical literacy among second language (L2)…

This paper aims to present a critical analysis of the Year 1 Phonics Screening Check (PSC), with special focus on the relationship between the UK Department for Education's policy-making and the evidence considered in the process of developing and evaluating the PSC. The reports from the in-house Standards and Testing Agency and from commissioned…

Cluster randomized trials involving participants nested within intact treatment and control groups are commonly performed in various educational, psychological, and biomedical studies. However, recruiting and retaining intact groups present various practical, financial, and logistical challenges to evaluators and often, cluster randomized trials…

The teleological bias, a major learning obstacle, involves explaining biological phenomena in terms of purposes and goals. To probe the teleological bias, researchers have used acceptance judgement tasks and preference judgement tasks. In the present study, such tasks were used with German high school students (N = 353) for 10 phenomena from human…

Paraphrasing is a signature practice of constructing intertextual discourse in academic writing. It is a story retelling technique commonly employed by academic writing classes to tackle plagiarism. However, teaching and learning of paraphrasing tend to place a very heavy emphasis on literal meanings of source messages and faithful reproductions…