This action research project explores masters level graduate student writing and academic identity during one semester in an interdisciplinary masters program. Informing this study is a two part theoretical framework including the Academic Literacy Model (Lea and Street) and Wenger's concept of identity. The purpose of this exploration was to…

Collaborative learning is a common teaching strategy in classrooms across age groups and content areas. It is important to measure and understand the cognitive process involved during collaboration to improve teaching methods involving interactive activities. This research attempted to answer the question: why do students learn more in…

In this thesis, we study the importance of background knowledge in relation extraction systems. We not only demonstrate the benefits of leveraging background knowledge to improve the systems' performance but also propose a principled framework that allows one to effectively incorporate knowledge into statistical machine learning models for…

Reform efforts to improve physical education often rely on facilitators to promote positive change. Although it is becoming more common, little is currently understood about the facilitation role. Our purpose was to examine facilitators' collective knowledge and experience with ongoing physical education professional development (PD), specifically…

This study examines how community-based mandated reporters understand and interpret "reasonable suspicion", the standard threshold for mandated reporting of suspected child abuse. Respondents were asked to identify the probability necessary for "suspicion of child abuse" to constitute "reasonable suspicion". Data were analyzed for internal…

Michael W. Smith, a professor in Temple University's College of Education, focuses his research on how experienced readers read and talk about texts as well as what motivates adolescents' reading and writing in and out of school. He sees the recent research on adolescents' out-of-school literacies as a challenge to literacy educators to look at…

The Bourdieuian concept of "position-taking" is applied in this analysis of recognition of prior learning (RPL) policy and practice in Australian higher education. Data from institutional documents and participant interviews indicate that, within RPL policy, the universities selectively employ prevailing discourses of "quality"…

In a climate where increasing numbers of students are encouraged to pursue post-secondary education, the level of preparedness students have for college-level coursework is not far from the minds of all educators, especially high school teachers. Specifically within the biological sciences, introductory biology classes often serve as the…

This study describes the sense-making behaviors of sixth- and seventh-grade students (n = 46 dyads) as they read and discussed expository articles in print and digital formats. Most dyads approached the digital text as if it were static and linear, despite the availability of hyperlinks. Reading through (or covering) the text was the most commonly…

Numerical problem solving in classical mechanics in university physics education offers a learning situation where students have many possibilities of control and creativity. In this study, expertlike beliefs about physics and learning physics together with prior knowledge were the most important predictors of the quality of performance of a task…

Previous studies have reported that students employed different problem solving approaches when presented with the same task structured with different representations. In this study, we explored and compared students' strategies as they attempted tasks from two topical areas, kinematics and work. Our participants were 19 engineering students…

The Particulate Nature of Matter and Chemical Bonding Diagnostic Instrument (Othman J., Treagust D. F. and Chandrasegaran A. L., (2008), "Int. J. Sci. Educ.," 30(11), 1531-1550) is used to investigate college students' understanding of two chemistry concepts: particulate nature of matter and chemical bonding. The instrument, originally…

Bernhardt (2005) proposed a compensatory model of second language reading. This model predicted that 50% of second language (L2) reading scores are attributed to second language knowledge and first-language (L1) reading ability. In this model, these two factors compensate for deficiencies in each other. Although this model explains a significant…

The commentary discusses phenomena highlighted in the studies of the special issue such as the hypercorrection effect, overconfidence, and the efficiency of interventions designed to increase monitoring accuracy. The discussion is based on a broader theoretical framework of self-regulation of learning that stresses the inferential character of…

Groups of children at a science museum were pre- and post-assessed with a type of concept map, known as personal meaning maps, to determine what new understandings, if any, they were gaining from participation in a series of structured hands-on activities about bones and the process of bones healing. Close examination was made regarding whether…