There has been a considerable growth in the use of flexible methods of delivery for workplace learning and development. However, in designing programmes of flexible learning there is often the assumption that learners will exhibit uniformity in the ways in which they process and organise information (cognitive style), in their predispositions…

In this era of high-stakes testing, many teachers feel forced to aim instruction toward what will be assessed and ignore what students really want to learn. Publishers create materials guaranteed to boost students' test scores, but they neither broaden students' understanding nor increase their interest in learning. When the textbook becomes the…

Meta-analyses of 33 studies were conducted to examine (1) how much the combination of taking and reviewing notes contributes to school learning, and (2) whether interventions in the note-taking/-reviewing procedure enhance note-taking/-reviewing effects, and if so, how much and under what conditions. Syntheses of findings from…

This paper focuses mainly on theoretical frameworks for understanding and investigating informal learning in the workplace, which have been developed through a series of large- and small-scale projects. The main conclusions are included but readers are referred to other publications for more detailed accounts of individual projects. Two types of…

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of self-regulated learning strategies on learners' perception of motivation within web-based instruction. In this study, self-regulated learning strategies, which were intended to assist students to self-observe and self-evaluate their effectiveness, were incorporated into a one-semester…

The author's experience with helping his granddaughters learn their spelling words led to a review of the literature on spelling theory and instruction. The purpose of this review was to answer the following questions: How should spelling words be chosen? Should spelling words be taught and tested in the list format? Is there a problem with using…

Two current movements of experiential learning receiving attention in mainstream educational reform are service-learning and outdoor education/adventure programming. Although sharing common philosophical roots, these movements have branched out into a variety of different applications and approaches. With increasing pressures on educational reform…

To increase the efficiency of exploratory learning on the Web, we previously developed a free-hyperlink environment that allows adaptive link generation. In this environment, learners can make new hyperlinks independent of static hyperlinks and share them on the Web. To reduce hyperlink overflow, the adaptive link generation filters out sharable…

Today's art museum educators face a challenge that is unprecedented in the field. Where not too long ago little was known regarding how people learn in the museum, now multiple theories have emerged (Falk & Dierking 1992, 2000; Hein 1998; Roberts, 1997; Yenawine, 1988). New theories breed new practices. The dilemma for art museum educators is to…

Roundhouse is a visually creative information-processing tool (J. E. Trowbridge and J. H. Wandersee 1998). The procedure requires learners to construct knowledge using "mindful" connections to replace less effective practices of memorizing fragmented information. Students create observable organization schemes of related ideas and icons in a…

A laboratory exercise incorporating biological keying into student learning, where students work together in cooperative learning setting is presented. The exercise fosters cooperative learning and accountability because the whole group is responsible for the final product.

Effective second language vocabulary acquisition is particularly important for English as a foreign language (EFL) learners who frequently acquire impoverished lexicons despite years of formal study. This paper comprehensively reviews and critiques second language (L2) reading vocabulary research and proposes that EFL teachers and administrators…

Can people learn causal structure more effectively through intervention rather than observation? Four studies used a trial-based learning paradigm in which participants obtained probabilistic data about a causal chain through either observation or intervention and then selected the causal model most likely to have generated the data. Experiment 1…

Most research on differential item functioning (DIF) focuses on methods for detection rather than on understanding why DIF might occur. This study was designed to investigate whether two alternative approaches to parsing items based on structural characteristics related to particular cognitive strategies could be used to help explain gender DIF.…

This paper discusses the notion of metacognition, which is usually defined as 'cognitions about cognitions', or 'thinking about one's own thinking'. In so doing, it reviews the literature on metacognition over the past three decades, listing different definitions of the term and identifying diverse origins of processes metacognitive. Aspects of…