Carol Twigg, president of the National Center for Academics Transformation and a secondary school teacher, debates on whether technology in the classroom improves student learning. She claims that the key to increasing student learning is to get students more engaged in what they are studying.

Despite the recommendation to maintain a brisk pace while delivering Direct Instruction programs, research evidence in support of brisk instructional pacing is mixed. This study examined the effects of slow- and fast-paced teaching on the response opportunities, participation, accuracy, and off-task behavior of 4 prekindergarten students…

Commencing in 1985, a small body of experimental studies on the effects of test taking on delayed retention learning of technical subject matter has been completed in technology education settings. Much of the learning in technology education courses, especially the hands-on aspects, are best assessed via instruments and techniques other than…

In this research note, the authors report on an exploratory study of the profile of an engaged sociology major. The purpose of this note is to assess which factors relate to senior majors' self-perceived, overall engagement in the discipline. Possible factors include demographic variables, attitudes about learning, and academic or study behaviors.…

The paper presents a study investigating the net-based learner autonomy of the first-year non-English major students studying in West Anhui University (WAHU). Through questionnaires and interviews, the study shows the problems in learner autonomy and presents a new perspective for the development of an auto-learning environment. The study reveals…

[Slides] presented at the Annual National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME) in New York in March 2008. This presentation explores the demographic information as well as how and where educational measurement professionals are in the field.

This study tests the claim that word learning and retention in a second language are contingent upon a task's involvement load (i.e. the amount of need, search, and evaluation it imposes), as proposed by Laufer and Hulstijn (2001). Seventy-nine beginning learners of Spanish completed one of three vocabulary learning tasks that varied in the amount…

This research study sought to understand the current state of Holocaust education in Romanian classrooms and how sociocultural and institutional forces influence its treatment. By identifying the obstacles, challenges, and successes of Holocaust education in Romania, this study can both disseminate the techniques and conditions that bring about…

The study in this article employed a multidimensional (behavioral, emotional, and cognitive) construct of school engagement to examine its relationship to school achievement in mathematics across the five major racial groups. The sample included 115 American Indians, 486 Asians, 1,551 Blacks, 1,682 Latinos, and 7,554 Whites who participated in the…

Because studies have shown that classroom distractions can interfere with school activities, the effects of several kinds of interruptions on elementary school students are described and measured for their frequency of occurrence, the time required for recovery of concentration, and their influence on morale and concentration. Using a sample of 65…

Prior knowledge of the content of a passage should reduce the effort required to encode the passage, and facilitate its recall. The results of two experiments on the effects of prior knowledge upon comprehension of simple technical prose are presented. The procedure was to collect ratings of the amount of prior knowledge for individual passage…

The amount of time students are engaged in the subject matter in physical education has been found to have a high correlation with student achievement. Academic Learning Time-Physical Education Motor [ALT-PS(M)] is defined as the amount of time a student spends in physical education content doing a motor skill with a low error rate. A report is…

Summarizing recent research, this seven-chapter report gives both characteristics and examples of effective schools and lists recommendations for achieving school effectiveness. Chapter 1 cites numerous recent studies to show that, in contradiction to earlier conclusions by James S. Coleman and Christopher Jencks, schools can be effective.…

The twelve papers, articles, and reports presented in this annotated bibliography review theories and evidence on the relationship between learning time and academic achievement in elementary and secondary schools. The papers concentrate on three types of learning time: "time on task," which is the amount of time students are actually engaged in…

The article considers various learning disabilities in mathematics and suggests teaching approaches such as ways to increase instructional time and the importance of building both computation skills and concepts. (DB)