The author of this paper provides an example of a conceptual framework that supported her doctoral study and written dissertation in the field of educational psychology. The study was carried out prior to the more recent explicit emphasis on conceptual frameworks in postgraduate research texts and academic literature. The instigation for the…

The purpose of this study was to compare the achievement of students taught with concept mapping, cooperative learning, 5E learning cycle and lecture methods with the intention of identifying which one among them could be most suitable for teaching Biology. To guide this study, four research questions were raised and tested at 0.05 level of…

This group of commentaries on teaching human rights in Turkey includes: (1) Reflection on Turkish Human Rights Lesson from Turkey (Alper Kesten)--A lesson on human rights in Turkey is analyzed for its representativity and methodology within the Turkish teaching culture from the viewpoint of a Turkish researcher; (2) Commentary on a Turkish Lesson…

Problem solving is a highly valued skill in chemistry. Courses within this discipline place a substantial emphasis on problem-solving performance and tend to weigh such performance heavily in assessments of learning. Researchers have dedicated considerable effort investigating individual factors that influence problem-solving performance. The…

This paper reports on teachers' use of concept mapping as an alternative assessment strategy in advanced level biology classes and its effects on students' cognitive skills on selected biology concepts. Using a mixed methods approach, the study employed a pre-test/post-test quasi-experimental design involving 156 students and 8 teachers from…

In this report, a follow-up to the June 2013 report: "Community-Led Arts Education Models in the U.S.: Potential Lessons for Milwaukee", the authors use a case study approach to delve deeper into the underlying mechanics and structural factors of four successful models: Boston's BPS Arts Expansion Initiative, Dallas' Big Thought,…

Word walls are designed to serve as visual scaffolds and are a common classroom tool used to support reading and language arts instruction. To support vocabulary development in science and support students who are ELLs, Husty and Jackson (2008) created interactive word walls that resemble semantic maps (Masters, Mori, and Mori 1993). Semantic maps…

Reflective learning can assist a learner's purposeful and conscious manipulation of ideas toward meaningful learning and knowledge integration. Blogs have been used to support reflection, but Blogs usually do not provide overt mechanisms for students to make connections between different parts of an experience, which is integral to reflective…

This article reports the results of a small-scale curriculum development project focusing on two of the seven "key concepts" identified in the revised Key Stage 3 (KS3) National Curriculum programme of study for geography, introduced into schools in 2007. The study used "interdependence" and "physical processes" as…

Student engagement in learning is a complex process influenced by many factors. This article introduces a conceptual organiser developed from a review of the literature. It captures four key perspectives--motivation and agency, transactional engagement, institutional support and active citizenship--and suggested indicators for each perspective.…

Instead of the traditional set of slides, the visual aids of a presentation can now be graphic organisers (concept maps, knowledge maps, mind maps) on an infinite canvas. Constructing graphic organisers has a beneficial impact on learning, but this topic has not been studied in the context of giving a presentation. The present study examined this…

This research attempted to bridge the gap between cognitive psychology and educational measurement (Mislevy, 2008; Leighton & Gierl, 2007; Nichols, 1994; Messick, 1989; Snow & Lohman, 1989) by using cognitive theories from working memory (Baddeley, 1986; Miyake & Shah, 1999; Grimley & Banner, 2008), multimedia learning (Mayer, 2001), and cognitive…

Making the program theory explicit is an essential first step in Theory Driven Evaluation (TDE). Once explicit, the program logic can be established making necessary links between the program theory, activities, and outcomes. Despite its importance evaluators often encounter situations where the program theory is not explicitly stated. Under such…

Ensuring the competence of healthcare professionals' is core to undergraduate and post-graduate education. Undergraduate pharmacy students and pre-registration graduates are required to demonstrate competence at dispensing and accuracy checking medicines. However, competence differs from understanding. This study determined the competence and…

The role of temporal synchrony and syllable distinctiveness in preverbal infants' learning of word-object relations was investigated. In Experiment 1, 7- and 8-month-olds (N=64) were habituated under conditions where two "similar-sounding" syllables, /tah/ and /gah/, were spoken simultaneously with the motions of one of two sets of…