This paper reports design experiments on two Japanese elementary science lesson units in a sixth-grade classroom supported by computer support for collaborative learning (CSCL) technology as a collaborative reflection tool. We took different approaches in the experiments depending on their instructional goals. In the unit 'air and how things…

The purpose of this study was to determine differences, in first-year college academic performance, between home school and traditional high school graduates, measured by grade point average, retention, ACT test scores, and credits. To accomplish the purpose, nine null hypotheses were tested to determine if there were differences between home…

This study tested the segmentation hypothesis of dyslexia by measuring implicit phonological representations in reading-disabled 11- to 13-year-olds. Implicit measures included lexical gating, priming, and syllable similarity tasks designed to reduce metalinguistic demands. Children with dyslexia performed consistently worse than CA and RA…

Working from the 1970s to the early 1990s, Walter Alvarez and his research team sought the cause of the mass extinction that claimed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. The present paper discusses that research in terms of eight puzzling observations, eight episodes of hypothetico-predictive reasoning, enumerative induction, and Jung's…

In the past ten years, the issue of inclusion has proved one of the biggest challenges facing special needs education planners and policy-makers in developed countries. Greek educational policy has given emphasis on two points: (a) the development of new organizational structures (i.e. resource rooms, support teachers), and (b) the implementation…

This study's purpose was to determine whether science teaching self-efficacy beliefs among new teachers of elementary science interact significantly with teaching environments in their schools. The study hypothesized a mechanism by which environments can interact with self-efficacy and, consequently, affect the quality of science teaching. The…

Many students enter mathematics courses with a poor attitude toward mathematics (Gal & Ginsburg, 1994), making attitude as important a consideration as achievement in mathematics (Cognition and Technology Group at Vanderbilt (CTGV), 1992; Marsh, Cairns, Relich, Barnes, & Debus, 1984; Sedighian & Sedighian, 1996). Pedagogical agents are often…

The present research investigated the relations among the declared preferred degree for using career-related abilities in one's future career, self-estimates of these abilities, and measured abilities in a sample of 201 career-counseling clients. The highest correlations (range .57-.65) were found between the preferred degree for using an ability…

The present study examined a longitudinal model of state and trait negative affect as predictors of job-search success. Job-search self-efficacy and job-search intensity were also examined as mediators of the negative affect--job-search success relation. Overall the model offered mixed support for Kasl's (1982) Reverse Causation Hypothesis.…

Explaining new ideas to oneself can promote transfer, but how and when such self-explanation is effective is unclear. This study evaluated whether self-explanation leads to lasting improvements in transfer success and whether it is more effective in combination with direct instruction or invention. Third- through fifth-grade children (ages 8-11;…

Problem solving and social support, as different styles of coping with intergenerational family conflict, were examined among 86 Hmong American college students. Problem solving and social support were hypothesized to differentially moderate the effects of family conflict on psychological adjustment. Furthermore, the effects of attributions of…

It has recently been determined that generating an explanatory hypothesis to explain a discrepant event is important for students' conceptual change. The purpose of this study is to investigate how students' generate new explanatory hypotheses. To achieve this goal, questions are used to identify students prior ideas related to electromagnetic…

We use a variation of contextual fear conditioning, called the context pre-exposure facilitation effect (CPFE) to study the rat's memory for context. In this paradigm, the rat is pre-exposed to a conditioning context and later returned to that context, where it is immediately shocked. The memory context is revealed by the fact that pre-exposure to…

This paper presents a model of syntax acquisition, whose main points are as follows: Syntax is acquired in an item-based manner; early learning facilitates subsequent learning--as evidenced by the accelerating rate of new verbs entering a given structure; and mastery of syntactic knowledge is typically achieved through practice--as evidenced by…

Two experiments tested predictions from a theory in which processing load depends on relational complexity (RC), the number of variables related in a single decision. Tasks from six domains (transitivity, hierarchical classification, class inclusion, cardinality, relative-clause sentence comprehension, and hypothesis testing) were administered to…