Knowledge structure is an important aspect for defining students' competency in biology learning, but how knowledge structure is influenced by the teaching process in naturalistic biology classroom settings has scarcely been empirically investigated. In this study, 49 biology lessons in the teaching unit "blood and circulatory system" in…

The purpose of this article is to use a facet theory research approach to provide a clear, coherent, and integrated model of international students' experiences based upon the findings of psychological research into students when studying abroad. In research that employs a facet theory approach events are classified in terms of their constituent…

With increasing complexity in the world, universities continue to face pressure to demonstrate that their graduates have acquired skills beyond discipline-based knowledge. These are generic skills like critical thinking, intellectual curiosity, problem-solving and so forth. In order to demonstrate this, universities have to show how their teaching…

This article examines the contribution of older adults as co-researchers to the evaluation of a gerontological social work course. The evaluation was conducted at an Israeli college as part of a collaborative project with a United Kingdom university. Here, we follow the older adults who are service users through their transition to the role of…

This paper reports an investigation into the effects of collaborative concept mapping in a digital learning environment, in terms of students' overall learning gains, knowledge retention, quality of student artefacts (the collaboratively created concept maps), interactive patterns, and learning perceptions. Sixty-four 12-year-old students from two…

Clients' perspectives on the therapeutic alliance were examined using written descriptions of factors that clients believed to be helpful in developing a strong alliance. Fifty participants sorted previously collected statements into thematically similar piles and then gave each set of statements a title. Multivariate concept mapping statistical…

The social-pragmatic theory of language acquisition proposes that children only become efficient at learning the meanings of words once they acquire the ability to understand the intentions of other agents, in particular the intention to communicate (Akhtar & Tomasello, 2000). In this paper we present a neural network model of word learning which…

We investigated 4- and 5-year-old children's mapping strategies in a spatial task. Children were required to find a picture in an array of three identical cups after observing another picture being hidden in another array of three cups. The arrays were either aligned one behind the other in two rows or placed side by side forming one line.…

These two studies investigated the university student clients' perspective on factors that hinder the counseling alliance. In Study 1, twelve university students identified alliance-hindering factors while watching a videotape of their third or fourth counseling session. In total, 74 factors (in the form of participant statements) were elicited…

Aimed at developing methods, tools and techniques for delivery and evaluation of an educational module, this article addresses the needs of academicians restructuring, adjusting and altering their curricula to meet European Higher Education Area standards. The paper focuses on two pressing issues -- the applicability of and adjustment to European…

Recent shifts in the conceptualization of effective literacy teaching have focused on the need for teachers to make teaching explicit (Edwards-Groves, 2010; Purcell-Gates, Duke, & Martineau, 2007; Rosenshine, 1986) or in Hattie's (2005) terms, learning "visible". Research has shown that the analysis of classroom interactive…

This paper describes a survey of online learning which attempts to determine online learning providers' awareness of potential security risks and the protection measures that will diminish them. The authors use a combination of two methods: blog mining and a traditional literature search. The findings indicate that, while scholars have…

Concept mapping, graphically depicting the structure of abstract concepts, is based on the observation that pictures and line drawings are often more easily comprehended than the words that represent an abstract concept. The efficacy of concept mapping for facilitating critical thinking was assessed in four sections of an introductory psychology…

The purpose of this study is to use a comparative approach to scrutinize the common assumption that certain school science activities are theoretical and therefore particularly suited for engaging students with scientific ideas, whereas others are practical and, thus, not equally conducive to engagement with scientific ideas. We compared two…

A large body of research in the learning sciences has focused on students' commonsense science knowledge--the everyday knowledge of the natural world that is gained outside of formal instruction. Although researchers studying commonsense science have employed a variety of methods, 1-on-1 clinical interviews have played a unique role. The data…