David Stephens, a 4th grade teacher in Washington State, was preparing a lesson plan about desert wildlife (all names are pseudonyms). He was planning on assigning his students the chapter book, "Desert Giant: The World of the Saguaro Cactus." The students had divergent knowledge about the topic. For example, Maryam had grown up in…

The purpose of this study is to test the relationship between seventh-grade students' personal epistemology for science, subjective task value, and science self-efficacy, with prior achievement serving as a moderator. The mediating role of subjective task value is proposed in the prediction of the relationship between personal epistemology for…

The veteran military-to-civilian transition (MCT) process continues to be complex and unwielding. Higher education has an opportunity to ease this transition, but, unfortunately many institutions still miss the mark. One mechanism higher education institutes can incorporate to help with the transition is the use of prior learning assessments or…

Training programs are a popular method, in industry globally, to increase awareness of desired concepts to employees and employers and play a critical part in changing or supporting performance improvements. The predominant method to assess the effectiveness of training programs is to have the participants answer Multiple Choice Question (MCQ) and…

Novel word learning and consolidation was studied in inexperienced language learners, to conceptually replicate and extend a similar study in experienced learners by Bakker, Takashima, Van Hell, Janzen, and McQueen (2015). Participants learned definitions for novel words on Day 1 and for another set of novel words on Day 2. Brain potentials…

Making activities and environments have been shown to foster the development of computational thinking (CT) skills for students in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) subject areas. To properly cultivate CT skills and the related dispositions, educators must understand students' needs and build awareness of how CT informs a deeper…

Undergraduate science students are known to struggle in introductory courses and often focus their studying efforts on memorization-based, algorithmic processes instead of focusing on gaining a conceptual understanding of the course material. To address this issue, the current study investigates the effects training undergraduate chemistry…

The challenges facing non-native English-speaking students (NNESSs) in adapting to the conventions of academic writing at the tertiary level in English-medium institutions have been widely canvassed in scholarly research. Nonetheless, there does not appear to be a great deal of research that investigates the experiences of Arabic-speaking students…

The German government requires all migrants without sufficient German language proficiency to enroll in integration courses. Many of these migrants had few prior experiences with formal education, yet, regardless of degree of literacy in any language, they are placed in classes based on language proficiency. How well do government-approved…

This report demonstrates how credit for prior learning (CPL) can revolutionize education and career advancement for older adults and veterans while supporting the success of postsecondary education institutions. Focusing on the untapped potential of decades of experience, the report explores how CPL can make higher education more accessible and…

Although several studies underline the importance of a successful opening of a school lesson to spur students' interest and facilitate learning, we have limited knowledge about how openings are enacted in classrooms. This study contributes to the sparse research by asking: "What characterizes the openings of 58 reading lessons in Norwegian…

This study examined preservice elementary teachers' (PETs') epistemological beliefs (EB) and their views about mathematics (VM) and the impact on these parameters by their prior experience in learning mathematics. A total of 541 PETs from an American university completed EB and VM questionnaires. It was found that participants' EB and the…

The aim of this study was to reveal science teachers' attitudes, readiness and views for STEM education. Parallel to this aim, the study was conducted in two parts. In the first part, to examine attitudes and readiness of the science teachers, T-STEM survey which consists of nine sub-parts, was implemented on the participants. In the second part,…

There has been a lack of research systematically identifying the kinds of international students who struggle to succeed academically in the New Zealand tertiary context. This research was conducted to determine whether students who enter through different pathways have equal likelihood of academic success after admission. Statistical information…

We focus on the pedagogical merit of introducing and assessing Thresholds Concepts (TCs) in the curriculum with a view to (inter alia) regain public confidence and trust in the legitimacy of business education and qualifications -- especially since the 2007-2010 global recession. While the education literature foregrounds the role of higher…