Certificates are recognition of completion of a course of study based on a specific field, usually associated with a limited set of occupations. Certificates differ from other kinds of labor market credentials such as industry-based certifications and licenses, which typically involve passing an examination to prove a specific competency,…

This study examined the second language (L2) development of adult learners of Spanish at three levels of proficiency during and after a semester of instruction. A fundamental goal was to identify cognitive and psychosocial individual differences (IDs) that can explain between-learner variation over time in order to expand our understanding of the…

The purpose of the study was to investigate the relationship among math attitudes, self-regulated learning, and course outcomes in developmental math. Math attitudes involved perceived usefulness of math and math anxiety. Self-regulated learning represented the ability of students to control cognitive, metacognitive, and behavioral aspects of…

Improving reading rate can be difficult for poor readers. In this experiment, we investigated the impact of improvement in reading rate on other aspects of reading, including word recognition, decoding, vocabulary, and comprehension. Poor readers in Grades 2 or 4 (N = 123) were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 conditions: practice reading text at their…

In this study, four years of formal observations of classroom teaching practice were employed to ascertain the practice fidelity of a site-based school reform in a secondary school setting. Those observations were then used as a criterion variable in an examination of differences in the perspectives of administrators, teachers and teaching peers…

This study explored mathematics teachers' instructional practices in the context of high-stakes testing. Data were obtained from a survey instrument given to a stratified sample of Mississippi and Tennessee teachers who teach the same content tested on their state's high school graduation examination. An analysis showed teachers using a balance of…

This paper takes a close look at India's literacy rate by exploring whether the officially "literate" can read and at what level. In a large sample, aged 7+, drawn from four Hindi-speaking states, two methods were used to measure literacy. One was the standard Census Method (CM) which relies on self-reporting and the other was a Reading…

We investigated two methods to promote prospective teachers' awareness of learner diversity and application of teaching principles using a problem-based learning environment. In Experiment 1, we examined the effects of presenting a conceptual framework about learners' individual and group differences either before or after instruction on teaching…

The tendency for women to report both commission and receipt of violence is an understudied phenomenon. In particular, little is known about individual differences as a function of commission vs. receipt of partner violence among pregnant women. Using a sample of 78 cohabiting low-SES pregnant women, the current study examines three violence…

This study investigated whether children's inversion shortcut use (i.e., reasoning that no calculations are required for the problem 4 x 8 divided by 8, as the answer is the first number) is related to their analogical reasoning ability, short-term memory capacity, and working memory capacity. Children from Grades 6 and 8 solved multiplication and…

A major challenge for learning theories is to illuminate how particular kinds of learning experiences and environments promote the development of expertise. Research has been conducted into novice-expert differences in various domains, but few studies have examined the processes involved in learners' expertise development. In an attempt to…

Postgraduates' English acquisition is an intriguing but complex process. A lot of factors have contributed to the outcome of a learner's acquisition, among them, motivation and strategy are playing a crucial role. Motivation is the driving force to encourage the learner to learn, while strategy being the techniques or devices for a learner to use…

The purpose of this study was to highlight the role of twin designs in understanding children's conversational interactions. Specifically, we (a) attempted to replicate the findings of genetic effects on children's conversational language use reported in DeThorne et al. (2008), and (b) examined whether the language used by examiners in their…

Interviews with seven female immigrant Armenian high school students explore their modes of incorporation through examining how their interactions with the Internet shape their conceptions of home, ideas about citizenship, differences from their parents and each other, and gender identity role development. Differences emerged between 1.5 and 2nd…

Stating an individual to focus and considering him as a value that should be developed independently have gained importance in our classes where understandings stating students and learning to central point were gathered with new curriculum under the same roof. Each student's learning and teaching lives transformed into an academic synergy by…