This book traces the motivational dynamics embedded within lifelong foreign language learning trajectories, examining the factors which generate and sustain motivation throughout a learner's life. Embracing a complexity approach, it views motivation as a long-term individual process that evolves along a narrative continuum, developing over the…

Understanding how students develop learning opportunities through peer-to-peer interaction is vital for advancing research and practice on collaborative learning environments. This study investigated the discourse practices middle grade students utilized to resolve conflict in ways that promoted or inhibited learning opportunities. Seventy-seven…

Teaching deeper learning involves cultivating the critical thinking, problem-solving, and collaboration skills that students need to be successful in their college, career, and civic life. It also involves encouraging students to be active participants in their learning. Public schools across the United States often work to help students develop…

This book highlights the roles of several individual difference (ID) variables on the language learning process, exploring them from both the students' and the teachers' perspectives. It presents the results of a large-scale, mixed-methods investigation which was conducted with secondary school pupils and their teachers in Hungary. The…

Students in object-oriented analysis and design (OOAD) courses typically encounter difficulties transitioning from object-oriented analysis (OOA) to logical design (OOLD). This study conducted an empirical experiment to examine these learning difficulties by evaluating differences between OOA-to-OOLD and OOLD-to-object-oriented-physical-design…

This book explores connections between the fields of foreign/second language teaching and adult learning. This interdisciplinary approach serves as a framework in order to: (a) understand the teaching methods that promote the deeper, more critical sort of language learning advocated by scholars and professional organizations, (b) understand how…

Purpose: This policy brief, the second AERI-NEPC eBrief in the series "Understanding validity issues around the world", focuses on validity as it applies to test-based models of evaluation employed for schools, instructional programs, and teachers around the world. It discusses validity issues that could arise when data from student…

Executive function (EF) skills are the attention-regulation skills that make it possible to sustain attention, keep goals and information in mind, refrain from responding immediately, resist distraction, tolerate frustration, consider the consequences of different behaviors, reflect on past experiences, and plan for the future. As EF research…

In 2010, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation's Education Program has established the Deeper Learning Initiative, which focuses on students' development of deeper learning skills (i.e., the mastery of core academic content, critical-thinking, problem-solving, collaboration, communication, and "learn-how-to-learn" skills). Two test…

In this study, the author collected narratives from her students in a music teacher education programme. Using narrative analysis, students' assumptions and thoughts about music teaching, music learning and music making were uncovered. Through the presentation of a case study of one student, the author demonstrates some of the ways that the…

Previous research on peer tutoring has found that students sometimes benefit academically from tutoring other students. In this study we combined quantitative and qualitative analyses to explore how untrained peer tutors learned via explaining and responding to tutee questions in a non-reciprocal tutoring setting. In support of our hypotheses, we…

Background/Context: Many children of immigrants are not enrolled in high schools that sufficiently meet their needs, and subsequently, many are not making a successful transition to, and/or successfully completing, higher education. As immigration grows in the United States, educators and policy makers must understand how the educational processes…

There is a growing national recognition that teachers and teaching are at the heart of successful educational reform. However, few tools exist for measuring classroom instruction. The primary purpose of this article is to describe methods we developed to measure and study teaching, specifically while teachers were using a multimedia intervention…

The discussion of learning and teaching in this paper is based on data from a research project funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Teaching and Learning Research Programme (TLRP) programme. The research project is investigating the experiences of learning and working in further education colleges in Wales and the data used in…

Purpose: In light of the excessively broad conceptions and nonobservable terms generally characterizing discussions of organizational learning, this study explores the notion of organizational learning in schools through the conceptual framework of organizational learning mechanisms (OLM) and develops a measure of OLM at the elementary school…