The learning styles hypothesis--and particularly the meshing hypothesis--state that learners' preferences about their preferred modality of learning (i.e., visual, aural, or kinesthetic) predict learning gains on academic tasks. Despite the fact that this hypothesis is not borne out by the scientific evidence available to us, it still remains in…

"The Cognitive Challenges of Effective Teaching," by Chew and Cerbin (2021) outlines a framework of nine cognitive challenges to student learning. The framework can help economic educators better design and describe new ideas for teaching in economics. In this article, the author highlights and expands upon ideas that are particularly…

The unique nature of 2020 had the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers (AACRAO) focusing on creating more benchmarking changes in practice and policy in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and less on its surveys or other projects. However, they also engaged with the American Council on Education (ACE) in a large…

In this article, the contributions of cognitive psychology to research and development of medical education are assessed. The cognitive psychology of learning consists of activation of prior knowledge while processing new information and elaboration on the resulting new knowledge to facilitate storing in long-term memory. This process is limited…

Can research on disciplinary socialization and imprinting help us understand the extent to which educational developers bring aspects of their disciplinary training to their educational development research? In this paper, we explore the relationship between the research approaches developers associate with their original disciplinary training and…

Instructors are constantly baffled by the fact that two students who are sitting in the same class, who have access to the same materials, can come to understand a particular chemistry concept differently. Variation theory offers a theoretical framework from which to explore possible variations in experience and the resulting differences in…

Psychology lecturers are well-qualified to carry out action research which would contribute to the theoretical understanding of learning as well as having practical benefits for students. Pedagogical action research demonstrates how knowledge of psychology can be applied to solve practical problems, providing role models of psychological literacy…

Although any mainstream thought is subject to theoretical challenges, the challenges to the mainstream cognitive perspective on transfer have had an unfortunate divisive effect. This article takes a pragmatic view that transfer perspectives are simply designed objects (Plomp & Nieveen, 2007), which provide different information for different…

This article describes the design and implementation of the year 2 curriculum and student learning experiences in the Michigan State University Master of Arts in Educational Technology program. We discuss the ways that this second set of courses builds on the first year of the program that students encounter, and also describe the theoretical…

This paper presents data generated during a semester-long programme to support international students from countries in Melanesia and Asia embarking on masters research in education in a New Zealand university. All were scholarship recipients. The researcher-and facilitator-of the programme, was interested in documenting and understanding the…

This article provides an inside look at Barbara Knighton's classroom teaching. She uses big ideas to guide her planning and instruction and gives other teachers suggestions for adopting the big idea approach and ways for making the approach easier. This article also represents a "small slice" of a dozen years of collaborative research,…

As states seek to significantly increase college completion rates in a time of declining public resources, the fear is that the traditional model of higher education is no longer affordable or appropriate for the increasingly diverse marketplace of students who seek a college credential to improve their prospects in an increasingly competitive job…

Teachers act out a play every day that includes soliloquies, dialogue, questions, cues, and demonstrations to evoke a response from their audiences. Learning requires that the students--or audience--see a new concept in a motivating and dynamic environment, a setting that provokes inquiry and an understanding of how new knowledge applies to real…

This paper describes the programs and services colleges have in place to facilitate student mobility, and documents the main regional and provincial/territorial mechanisms to facilitate transfer of post-secondary credits from one institution to another. Because there are many terms used to describe elements of post-secondary transferability and…

There are two threads linking effective lectures and effective technology use. The first is consideration of what students bring to the table in terms of goals, interests, and prior knowledge. The second is the deliberate management of the opportunities for students to engage with content in order to focus their investment of mental effort on key…