The ability to generate novel hypotheses is an important problem-solving capacity of humans. This ability is vital for making sense of the complex and unfamiliar world we live in. Often, this capacity is characterized as an inference to the best explanation--selecting the "best" explanation from a given set of candidate hypotheses.…

Considering the importance of digital skills in university education, this article reports on a study which examined access to technology among first year students at a rural South African university. The study focused on the digital readiness of students prior to their admission to the university, since many universities provide access to…

Prior experience has been shown to improve learning in both humans and animals, but it is unclear what aspects of recent experience are necessary to produce beneficial effects. Here, we examined the capacity of rats with complete hippocampal lesions, restricted CA1 lesions, or sham surgeries to benefit from prior experience. Animals were tested in…

Constructing explanations of complex phenomena is an important part of doing science and it is also an important component of learning science. Students need opportunities to make claims based on available evidence and then use science concepts to justify why evidence supports the claim. But what happens when "new" evidence emerges for…

When proportional information is pit against whole number numerical information, children often attend to the whole number information at the expense of proportional information (e.g., indicating 4/9 is greater than 3/5 because 4 > 3). In the current study, we presented younger (3- to 4-year-olds) and older (5- to 6-year-olds) children a task…

Designing and conducting sound and informative experiments is an important aspect of inquiry learning. Students, however, often design experiments that do not allow them to reach conclusions. Considering the difficulties students experience with the process of designing experiments, additional guidance in the form of an Experiment Design Tool…

Discussions about past experiences in learning in encounter can lead to eliciting their implications for new educational experiences. There is a serious need to revisit some of these historical critiques and historical conversations. It may not seem easy to knock on the door of the historical. For some people this practice provokes fear. However,…

This article offers the term "accommodation transfer" as a way to understand the rhetorical skills disabled students transfer alongside writing knowledge as they access college writing assignments and writing classrooms. This study is based on five qualitative interviews with disabled college students and draws upon both writing transfer…

Making connections among multiple visual representations is key to students' learning. This article considers two learning processes involved in connection making: explicit sense making of connections and implicit perceptual induction of connections. Instructional interventions support these processes via different problem types: sense-making…

The purpose of this causal comparative investigation was to discern if there is an effect between type of Council for the Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP)-accredited counselor training programs (master's-only or master's and doctoral) and perceived level of job knowledge prior to first employment and job…

This study investigates the role of prior knowledge in supporting Japanese foreign language (FL) learners' L2 higher order thinking skills. Scholars recognize prior knowledge integration as the critical stage where learning occurs (Anderson et al., 2001; Britton, 1994; Kintsch, 1988, 1998), and consider it an untapped resource in the FL classroom…

Some strands of research on teacher cognition have remained predominantly cognitive and overlooked the socially-mediated nature of teachers' thoughts. One such strand is the research on teachers' pedagogical knowledge base, defined as the thought units/categories underlying teachers' instructional performance. To address this gap, the present…

The growth of Sino-foreign cooperative universities, departments and courses in China necessitates further discussion of how to develop teaching approaches that suit students attending these institutions. Despite substantial analysis of the commercial dimensions of Sino-foreign university partnerships, discussion of effective teaching strategies…

Uganda Baptist Seminary (UBS) is accredited by the Ugandan National Council for Higher Education and teaches church leaders from Uganda and its surrounding seven countries. The required language of educational instruction is English, although the students come from a multitude of different native languages. This research stems from a need to…

Purpose: This study reports on the development of an auditory passage comprehension task for Swedish primary school children of cultural and linguistic diversity. It also reports on their performance on the task in quiet and in noise. Method: Eighty-eight children aged 7-9 years and showing normal hearing participated. The children were divided…