Four years ago, teachers at International High School in Austin, TX, thought they were doing a great job. Visitors to the school for new immigrants often praised the faculty for working with such a diverse population of students, some of whom had no prior formal education. Aida Walqui's observation was different. The director of WestEd's Quality…

Research has found a relation between motivation and attributions for success and failure. However, few studies have clarified the relationship of attributions to school achievement and possible cultural differences in this relationship. To investigate this issue, 5333 secondary students (European, Asian, Maori, Pacific) rated four common…

The current government in Korea, in order to encourage more fluent use of English, has shifted the focus of the English curriculum from language accuracy to language fluency by encouraging English teachers to use English as a classroom language. However, many English teachers in Korea feel burdened by this policy, mainly because they themselves…

Graduate students seeking to be educational leaders in today's high-demand society require more than lectures and textbooks to learn the requisite leadership skills. They must also have the opportunity to develop and test job skills in an on-the-job environment. Future leaders need the opportunity to grapple with the dilemmas principals face…

In four experiments, participants performed sentence comprehension tasks simultaneously with bimanual coordination. Half of the sentences described events that could not be performed by a human (non-performable) and half described actions that could be performed by a human (performable). Effects of sentence type on coordination were indexed by…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the possible effects of choral voice-part training/experience and music complexity on focus of attention to melody or harmony. Participants (N = 150) were members of auditioned university choral ensembles divided by voice-part (sopranos, n = 44; altos, n = 33; tenors, n = 35; basses, n = 38). The music…

Currently, few measures are available to monitor young children's progress in acquiring key early academic skills. In response to this need, the authors have begun developing measures (i.e., the Early Arithmetic, Reading and Learning Indicators, or EARLI) of preschoolers' numeracy skills. To accurately and efficiently monitor acquisition of early…

In the wake of the information explosion and rapidly progressing technology [Mayer, R. E. (2001). "Multimedia learning". Cambridge: University Press] formulated a theory that focused on human cognition, rather than technology capacity and features. By measuring the effect of cognitive individual differences and display design manipulations on…

This study examined whether and, if so, how word-problem features differentially affect problem difficulty as a function of mathematics difficulty (MD) status: no MD (n = 109), MD only (n = 109), or MD in combination with reading difficulties (MDRD; n = 109). The problem features were problem type (total, difference, or change) and position of…

The purposes of this study were to examine the effects of two types of interactive computer simulations and of prior knowledge levels on concept comprehension, cognitive load, and learning efficiency. Seventy-two 5th grade students were sampled from two elementary schools. They were divided into two groups (high and low) based on prior knowledge…

The unique structure of Russian orthography may influence the organization and acquisition of reading skills in Russian. The present review examines phonemic-graphemic correspondences in Russian orthography and discusses its grain-size units and possible difficulties for beginning readers and writers. Russian orthography is governed by a…

In the transition years, Grades 7 to 9, the shift from natural numbers to rational numbers and the associated multiplicative concepts prove challenging for many learners. The new concepts, operations and notation must be mastered if the student is to thereafter rise to meet the challenges of algebra and more advanced and powerful mathematics. The…

The objective of this paper is to provide some practical insight into the process of implementing large-scale randomized controlled trials (RCT) in educational settings and to provide general recommendations for researchers conducting education-based RCTs in the future. The authors draw their recommendations from their recent experiences…

The WWC practice guide "Improving Reading Comprehension in Kindergarten Through 3rd Grade" presents a set of evidence-based practices that teachers and other educators can use to successfully teach reading comprehension to young readers. The guide, developed by a panel of experts, presents a set of evidence-based practices that teachers…

Animated models explicating how a problem is solved and why a particular method is chosen are expected to be effective learning tools for novices, especially when abstract cognitive processes or concepts are involved. Cognitive load theory was used to investigate how learners could be stimulated to engage in genuine learning activities. It was…