Computer-mediated social learning contexts have become increasingly popular over the last few years; yet existing models of students' cognitive-affective states have been slower to adopt dyadic interaction data for predictions. Here, we explore the possibility of capitalizing on the inherently social component of collaborative learning by using…

Research into human decision making (DM) processes from outside of education paint a different picture of DM than current DM models in education. This pilot study assesses the use of critical decision method (CDM)--developed from observations of firefighters' DM -- in the context of primary mathematics teachers' in-class DM. Preliminary results…

Most of the emphasis on mining online assessment logs has been to identify content-specific errors. However, the pattern of general "consistency" is domain independent, strongly related to performance, and can itself be a target of educational data mining. We demonstrate that simple consistency indicators are related to student outcomes,…

This paper discusses a research study that focused on middle grades students' abilities to read and to move between different graphical representations before and after instruction. The data analyzed were collected from a group of 76 sixth grade students who were in 3 different mathematics classes in a middle school located in central North…

The purpose of this paper was to refine an existing cognitive framework designed to characterize middle school students' statistical thinking. A case- study analysis was used to focus on two sub-processes of statistical thinking that were not adequately represented in the framework: students' use of multiplicative reasoning in analyzing data, and…

The fundamental question in creating coding categories for an open-ended questionnaire is how to transform a complete transcript into manageable pieces of data. This paper describes the methodology involved in coding qualitative data derived from an evaluation of the Cognitive Approaches to School Leadership (CASL) program. The first task was to…

This paper explores various aspects of voting behavior among nearly 900 British Columbia voters in the 1979 Canadian federal election. Specifically, the paper examines the aggregate significance of strategic choice in a voting situation and identifies factors which increase or decrease an individual's disposition to act strategically. Strategic…

This paper reports the findings of an experiment designed to test extensions of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) within the context of using the World Wide Web to gather and analyze financial information. The proposed extensions are three-fold. Based on prior research, cognitive absorption variables are posited as predeterminants of ease of…

How do more experienced school administrators think about and attend to problems in school administration? This paper presents findings of a study that compared how principals and aspiring principals cognitively processed and solved a problem scenario. A total of 30 practicing principals and 24 aspiring principals (referred to as the "novice…

This report is a pilot effort to understand how knowledge imformation is effectively imparted in a classroom. The work is built on a study of the cognitions of effective teaching. Expert teachers were identified by monitoring the gain scores of students in classrooms over a 5-year period. All teachers were interviewed, observed, and videotaped…

This paper addresses components of a 3-year longitudinal study in which 9th and 10th grade students in Australia, Canada, and Zambia participated in data-handling programs through networked learning communities. Of interest here are the students' responses to a selection of "ends-in-view" problems, which formed the major part of the…

Methodological issues in the use of protocol analysis for research into human problem solving processes are examined through a case study in which two students were videotaped as they worked together to solve mathematical problems "out loud." The students' chosen strategic or executive behavior in examining and solving a problem was…

In the present study, task instruction and lab data format were manipulated to explain the discrepancy between the positive linear recall function with expertise (reported by van de Wiel and others, 1993), and the generally found intermediate effect in clinical case recall. Sixteen second-year medical students, 16 fourth-year students, and 16…

The dimensions of the broad social-cognitive and metacognitive matrix within which pure cognitions reside are examined. Tangible cognitive actions are the cross products of beliefs held about a task, the social environment within which the task takes place, and the problem solvers' perceptions of self and their relation to the task and…

Seven potentially useful maxims from the field of human information processing are proposed that may help institutional researchers prepare and present information for higher education decision-makers. The maxims, which are based on research and theory about how people cognitively process information, are as follows: (1) more may not be better;…