In classroom learning, students need mathematical cognitive flexibility to be able to solve mathematical problems with the various ideas they express. To solve the problems, they must be able to grasp the problem, see it from various points of view, and should not be rigid thinking with one solving method. In fact, the students still lack the…

Design is a key element of both the teaching and learning of engineering and technology. However, the process of engineering design has yielded limited research results. This study explored the iterative design process by searching for sequential design thinking patterns. The researchers collected nine concurrent think-aloud protocols from…

The purpose of this study was to examine moment-by-moment fluctuations in text comprehension processing and determine how and when poor and good comprehenders differ. To do so, we reanalyzed a dataset of think-aloud protocols from 138 intermediate elementary students. Both good and poor comprehenders used a variety of processing strategies when…

Words can be informative linguistic markers of psychological constructs. The purpose of this study is to examine associations between word use and the process of making meaningful connections to a text while reading (i.e., inference generation). To achieve this purpose, think-aloud data from third-fifth grade students (N = 218) reading narrative…

The purpose of this paper is to assess the validity of multiple-choice questions in measuring fourth grade students' ability to interpret graphs related to physical science topics such as motion and temperature. We administered a test including 6 multiple-choice questions to 28 fourth grade students. Students were asked to explain their thinking…

The goal was to test whether cognitive flexibility moderates the relation between reading strategy use and reading comprehension during the elementary years. Seventy-five second- through fifth-grade students completed a think aloud task and a metacognitive questionnaire to measure reading strategies, two card-sorting tasks to measure general and…

Tired of hearing about "complex text"? Bothered by the pushy messages about "challenge"? This book is for you! Unlike the many other materials on text complexity, this one focuses on specific comprehension skills that students need in order to really engage with text. This book will help elementary school teachers equip their…

The act of creating meaning with texts is complex, and this complexity creates unclear views of instruction in schools and even greater perplexity in knowing how to instruct students who may be struggling in this area of their schoolwork. Comprehension is often measured in schools as a product and an outcome, making it difficult to understand why…

This study investigated the voices of students interpreting Hebrew Bible texts in one fourth-grade classroom. Through think-alouds on the Biblical text with each student, exit interviews, teacher interviews, and classroom observations, this study found that those students whose interpretive stances were more aligned with the teacher's were given…

The purpose of this study was to determine if there are gender differences among elementary school-aged students in regard to the inferences they generate during reading. Fourth-grade students (130 females; 126 males) completed think-aloud tasks while reading one practice and one experimental narrative text. Females generated a larger number and a…

Using a case study design, our research explored question generation as a reading comprehension strategy, focusing on the types of questions 4th- and 5th-grade students posed before, during, and after reading narrative text. The authors aimed to determine whether their participants are ready to pose the higher-level questions expected of them by…

Art-based reading instruction and interventions for elementary and middle school students are growing in popularity despite scant theoretical rationale and empirical research support. This study explored the degree to which painting comprehension processes map onto text comprehension processes in this population. In particular, we used think aloud…

Providing learners with multiple representations of learning content has been shown to enhance learning outcomes. When multiple representations are presented across consecutive problems, we have to decide in what sequence to present them. Prior research has demonstrated that interleaving "tasks types" (as opposed to blocking them) can…

Teachers of elementary mathematics face multiple, convergent demands. These demands include supporting the growing population of English language learners (ELLs) and facilitating mathematical discussions across relevant curricular contexts. The authors used a comparative case study to examine how two teachers attempt to facilitate discussions…

A qualitative think-aloud study, informed by social literacies and holistic bilingual perspectives, was conducted to examine how six emergent bilingual, Mexican American, fourth graders approached, interacted with, and comprehended narrative and expository texts in Spanish and English. The children had strong Spanish reading test scores, but…