Students come to their high school physics classroom with experiences and knowledge that can be used to help explain physics concepts, but those experiences may not fully align with the scientifically accepted science concept. When there is a misalignment between a student's prior knowledge and the scientifically accepted concept a misconception…

Epistemic beliefs, epistemic cognitions, and self-regulation processes have a significant role in students' learning. Through this study, I investigated the role of mechanical engineering students' epistemic beliefs and epistemic cognitions involved in self-regulation processes while working on tasks with different difficulty levels. In this…

The genre of persuasive writing requires writers to independently probe their long-term memory to generate pertinent ideas that support their opinion on a given topic. However, many students with high-incidence disabilities struggle with the complex synergy of tasks involved in writing, and in particular generating ideas. A qualitatively dominant…

This qualitative inquiry sought to advance metacognitive theory with an understanding in higher-ordered thinking processes to complete a discussion forum as articulated by online undergraduates with learning disabilities. In doing so, descriptions of lived experiences enrich metacognitive theory by answering the research question, how do online…

Studies of proficient readers have shown that the use of certain strategies (e.g., relating personal background knowledge to text, attending to headings and images, and summarizing) is important for comprehension of challenging texts (Afflerbach, Pearson, & Paris, 2017; Duke et al., 2011; Goldman et al., 2016; Shanahan, Shanahan, &…

The act of creating meaning with texts is complex, and this complexity creates unclear views of instruction in schools and even greater perplexity in knowing how to instruct students who may be struggling in this area of their schoolwork. Comprehension is often measured in schools as a product and an outcome, making it difficult to understand why…

This study compared an expert-based cognitive model of domain mastery with student-based cognitive models of task performance for Integrated Algebra. Interpretations of student test results are limited by experts' hypotheses of how students interact with the items. In reality, the cognitive processes that students use to solve each item may be…

Learning by example is nothing new to the education landscape. Research into think-aloud protocols, though often used as a form of assessment rather than instruction, provided practical, content-specific literacy strategies for crafting the instructional intervention in this study. Additionally, research into worked examples--from the earliest…

This qualitative study examines children's comprehension of conventional, wordless, and postmodern picturebooks. The research question was: How do children construct meaning of conventional, wordless, and postmodern picturebooks? More specific questions were: 1) What are the reading strategies that children use as they make sense of…

While attentional models of SLA postulate attention as crucial for learning to take place (e.g., Robinson, 1995b; Schmidt, 1990, 2001; Tomlin & Villa, 1994), the role that awareness or lack thereof plays remains debatable. Indeed, the studies that have empirically addressed the construct of unawareness reveal conflicting results (e.g.,…

This thesis explores the role of multiple representations in introductory physics students' problem solving performance through several investigations. Representations can help students focus on the conceptual aspects of physics and play a major role in effective problem solving. Diagrammatic representations can play a particularly important role…

This dissertation utilized a multiple case study design to explore how advanced learners synthesize information about ill-structured topics when reading-to-learn and reading-to-do on the Web. Eight graduate students provided data in the form of think-alouds, interviews, screen video, digital trails, and task artifacts. Data analysis was based on…

Students who harbor misconceptions often find chemistry difficult to understand. To improve teaching about the dissolving process, first semester introductory chemistry students were asked to complete a free-response questionnaire on writing balanced equations for dissolving ionic compounds in water. To corroborate errors and misconceptions…

Recent scholarship on secondary reading calls for a shift from teaching generic literacy strategies to teaching discipline-specific language and literacy practices (Fang & Schleppegrell, 2008; Moje, 2008; Shanahan & Shanahan, 2012). This call for disciplinary literacy instruction (DLI) reflects the growing recognition that literacy…

This study explores professional learning of teachers in a web-based Open-Ended Learning Environment (OELE). Adult learning theorists suggest that adults are self-directed, experience-based, personally- and socially-related, problem-oriented, and application-focused learners. Constructivists suggest that the OELE affords learners opportunities to…