Many large-scale, school-based interventions have attempted to improve academic performance through promoting students' growth mindset, defined as the belief that one's intellectual ability can increase with practice and time. However, most have shown weak to no effects. Thus, it is important to examine how growth mindset might affect retention…

The purpose of this study was to examine how classroom language contexts characterized by peer language skills and proportions of dual language learners (DLL) influenced English language development for DLL and non-DLL children. Participants were 2,131 children from 135 classrooms across preschool through Grade 3. Children were classified into…

Although teachers are recommended to create a stimulating learning environment in which children can use, perfect, and extend their skills, this is far from easy. In many cases, identifying the optimal difficulty level of learning tasks involves a trial-and-error process during which teachers offer children too difficult tasks, with negative…

Context personalization--the incorporation of students' out-of-school interests into learning tasks--has recently been shown to positively affect students' situational interest and their performance and learning in mathematics. However, few studies have shown effects on both interest and achievement, drawing into question whether context…

Learning requires applying limited working memory and attentional resources to intrinsic, germane, and extraneous aspects of the learning task. To reduce the especially undesirable extraneous load aspects of learning environments, cognitive load theorists suggest that spatially integrated learning materials should be used instead of spatially…

Two experiments investigated whether instructions to students about how and what to learn can facilitate learning as effectively as adjunct postquestions. Adjunct-question, instruction, and adjunct-question plus instruction groups performed significantly better than the control group in recall of verbatim factual information and in responding to…

Sixty-one undergraduate students used a taxonomic instructional aid, a mnemonic aid, or their own methods to master the content of a passage describing a plant classification system and the distinguishing characteristics of the plant groups within that system. The demonstrated advantages of mnemonic strategies are discussed. (SLD)

The differences among elaborative-interrogation, reading-to-understand, and no-exposure control conditions with familiar domain material in contrast to unfamiliar domain material were studied for 50 Canadian and 50 west German undergraduates. Results provide evidence of effects of both elaborative interrogation and prior knowledge on learning.…

Results suggested that it may be possible to seek most efficient'' strategies for given tasks, and possibly, conditionally'' most efficient strategies for individual ability profiles. (Author)

Educational psychology undergraduates were taught in alternating instructional sequences; one sequence was a conceptually oriented lecture followed by a factually oriented self-study, the other sequence was a factual self-study followed by a conceptual lecture. Results more closely supported the predictions derived from the educational set…

Effects of 2 types of oral language training programs on development of phonological awareness skills and word learning ability were examined for 48 kindergartners. Children receiving analytic and synthetic training improved significantly on both types of skills, but children receiving synthetic skills training alone improved only in blending…