Credentialing educational accomplishment is an important function of colleges and universities. It is shown that accreditation and national assessment programs provide academe with effective tools for improving the quality and social justice of the credentialing system regarding extrainstitutional learning. National testing programs, ACE credit…

Examines the influence of prior knowledge on the quality of fourth-grade students' responses to three process-approach tasks: writing, conferencing, and revising. Results suggest that prior knowledge is a significant factor in all phases of process-approach lessons. (NH)

Describes a comprehension questioning strategy, based on R. Stauffer's Directed Reading-Thinking Activity, that enhances students' use of reasoning on the basis of prior knowledge. (FL)

A study investigated the effect of relevant background knowledge on the reading comprehension of students of Spanish. Students with limited knowledge of baseball took a comprehension test on a Spanish-language report of a baseball game. Results indicate that background knowledge is possibly more important than language level for comprehension.…

Determined if there are certain propositions that physics students (N=31) share with respect to a topic, to what extent is a student's knowledge on a subject idiosyncratic, and if there are different groups of students whose members share distinctive sets of propositions. Results are reported and discussed. (DH)

Examines whether learning rates vary across students, teachers, and subject matter as a function of instructional time. Offers a model of the relationship between time and learning. Discovers that the varying positive effects of instructional time on reading and mathematics achievement depend on teachers' and students' initial ability. (ETS)

The effects of examples used with application adjunct questions on concept learning were evaluated. Results indicated that application adjunct questions did not produce significantly higher performance on criterion questions than no-question treatments. Matched adjunct questions produced higher levels of performance on criterion than unmatched…

Explains significant but accounted for factors that affected the validity of the Degrees of Reading Power Test. (HOD)

Criticizes E. D. Hirsch and cultural literacy. Raises questions about the selection of content and teaching methods in a program for cultural literacy. Clarifies the concept of the "writerly" and supports the argument that it is necessary in education for literacy with arguments from empirical research, history, and personal experience.…

Discusses the author's experiences while attending a writing workshop--and how they reshaped the way in which he taught writing in a subsequent workshop developed in his own district--which encompassed writing through reading, writing environments, focus, writing from personal experience, and listening to students while they learn to write. (HTH)

Describes semantic mapping, an effective strategy for vocabulary instruction that involves the categorical structuring of information in graphic form and requires students to relate new words to their own experience and prior knowledge. (HOD)

Proposes four guidelines to help educators evaluate vocabulary instruction: (1) instruction should help students relate new vocabulary to their background knowledge, (2) instruction should help students develop elaborated word knowledge, (3) instruction should provide for active student involvement, and (4) instruction should develop students'…

Describes a metacognitive approach to improving vocabulary. The method trains students to establish a network of relationships among words and relate the words to personal experiences. (HOD)

Reports on a study that examined whether students' comprehension and recall of an expository passage would improve if they were given information about the organization of the passage before they read it. (HOD)

Describes an experiment that explored the relationships between text structure, prior knowledge, and reader's purpose on the processing of text and memory for text information. Results demonstrated that the strategies used to read text are flexible. (HOD)