By assessing student engagement with learning tasks along with students' understanding of subject matter before and during teaching, teachers are able to shift their teaching approaches through improvisational pedagogical reasoning in real time. However, if a teacher does not know how to respond to students' cues, their capacity to effectively…

This paper draws attention to the tendency of a range of technologies to reduce pedagogical interactions to a series of datafied transactions of information. This is problematic because such transactions are always by definition reducible to finite possibilities. As the ability to gather and analyse data becomes increasingly fine-grained, the…

In this issue, Cavanaugh, Giapponi, and Golden (2016) have discussed the new prominent role of digital devices in the lives of students; the possible impact of these widely-used technologies on developing, learning minds; and the relevance of new cognitive neuroscience research and technologies for better understanding the potential effects of…

To maximize the effectiveness of instructional explanations, they should be tailored to an individual learner. However, instructors are often not able to collect diagnostically relevant information about a learner to individualize their explanations. This is particularly true in computer-mediated settings where it is more difficult to thoroughly…

In instructional communication settings, instructional explanations play an important role. Despite the very common use of instructional explanations, empirical studies show that very often, they have no positive effects on learning outcomes. This ineffectiveness might be due to mental passivity of the recipient learners that leads to shallow…

A study examined primary school teachers' matching of instructional reading methods to models of reading difficulties and how often they used each activity in their classrooms. Subjects were 39 primary school teachers from the northeast section of a Great Lakes, midwestern state. For the study, teachers characterized each reading method according…

Discusses the structure of a problem-based curriculum based on the complexity of the problems that the students must solve, taking into account the level they must attain and their previous experience with problem-based teaching. This approach is compared with the conventional teaching methods. Twenty-two references are listed. (CHC)

Conjoint retention and confluency are examined as psychological and pedagogical principles for use in instruction in English as a Second Language (ESL) when maps are used as facilitators. The theory of conjoint retention states that dual encoding occurs when a person hears or reads a narrative while simultaneously viewing a map containing…

This study described teaching methods in use in computer studies classes, explored the reasons for their use, and explored perceptions of effectiveness. Four main research methods were used: semistructured interviews; observation of teaching; perusal of course documents; and informal collection of information by talking to students and tutors. One…

Typically, guidelines for design of interactive multimedia systems have been based on intuitive beliefs of designers rather than being founded on relevant research and theory. As advances in technology create new opportunities for education, it is important to use a range of theoretical perspectives to optimize use of new technology in teaching…

Well-constructed Information Management Systems (IMSs) are designed specifically to allow for the unobtrusive and automatic acquisition of data describing the key operations associated with the interlocking cycle of relationships between curriculum, instruction, and assessment. This paper argues that IMS software is an essential element to be…

A computerized symbol processor system using an Apple IIe computer and a Power Pad graphics tablet was tested with 22 nonspeaking, multiply disabled students. The students were taught to express themselves independently in writing, and they did significantly better than control students on measures of language comprehension and symbol recognition.…