This study examines Hong Kong students' motivational beliefs, strategy use and their relations with two relational factors in classrooms--student learning community and teacher support and involvement. A total of 2206 Grade Four to Grade Nine students responded to a questionnaire that comprised three instruments, including two scales measuring…

Student evaluations of a large General Psychology course indicate that students enjoy the class a great deal, yet attendance is low. An experiment was conducted to evaluate a personal response system as a solution. Attendance rose by 30% as compared to extra credit as an inducement, but was equivalent to offering pop quizzes. Performance on test…

Writing is a highly valued skill that is often neglected in the classroom; one reason is that teachers often do not receive adequate training in writing assessment and instruction. Teachers, particularly preservice teachers, need practice making detailed assessments of student writing and to build their confidence for assessing student writing,…

With regard to transfer, is it better to provide pupils with ready-made representations or is it more effective to scaffold pupils' thinking in the process of generating their own representations with the help of peers and under the guidance of a teacher in a process of guided co-construction? The sample comprises 10 classes and 239 Grade 5…

This article presents the findings of an intervention study designed to examine the effects of metacognitive strategy instruction (MCSI) on learners' performance and on strategy use. Two classes in the secondary English oral classroom in Hong Kong participated in the study; one class received eight sessions of MCSI and the other served as a…

In an embedded cognitive-strategy system, learners are forced to use a given cognitive strategy prepared by the instructor, designer, or researcher. In a generative cognitive-strategy system, learners are directed to generate a certain cognitive strategy activator by themselves. This is a review of experimental and theoretical studies conducted on…

This article describes how "Psychology Today" articles were used to increase the relevance of an introductory psychology course. The articles were selected to match the interests of various academic majors and career areas. Includes a sample list of articles and information on where to obtain the complete bibliography. (DH)

To help boost children's study skills, this article provides tips for organizing parent education sessions, establishing an after school homework assistance program, providing homework organizers for students, and creating a homework hotline. Once the school program is in order, parents can be invited to participate as partners. (MLH)

An argument that rationality is a learned behavior, rather than a natural facility, is developed vis-a-vis certain educational theories. The difficulties students face in maintaining a rational stance in an autonomous classroom are also discussed. (JL)

The effects of the level of adjunct question and type of feedback on learning concepts from prose were examined, using 534 college students. Results suggest that feedback does not necessarily facilitate concept learning and adjunct application questions do not always facilitate the learning of concepts through reading. (TJH)

The performance of 60 learning disabled and normally achieving children (ages 9-12), either given minimal instruction to use organizing strategies or engaged only in practice with a free recall task, were compared. Factors underlying the unexpected finding that strategy use did not account for learning disabled students' poor recall are discussed.…

States that instruction in the techniques of reasoning can be valuable in developing an understanding of subject matter, even if the reasoning involved is not peculiar to that subject or field. Illustrates how both analytic and nonanalytic forms of reasoning may be used by students of different ages to explore the subject matter of diverse fields.…

This paper argues that punishment and moral education are compatible; that punishment can assist moral education by providing the necessary pre-conditions for its success, and can on occasion actually teach the child morally relevant information. (Author/JDH)

Briefly examines the research regarding taking notes from text. Proposes a four-stage model for teaching note taking that combines insight from schema theory and metacognitive research, which indicates that sentence summaries, main-idea paraphrasing, and periodic information summaries are beneficial forms of note taking. (Author/AYC)

When the "mantle of the expert" system of teaching is used in drama, the teacher assumes a fictional role which places the student in the position of being the expert. In this project, students were historians/anthropologists charged with the responsibility of creating a Bronze Age community. (MT)