In an increasingly complex media environment, science educators must help prepare students to make decisions on science-related issues that are in the best interest of themselves and their communities. Researchers have suggested the use of socioscientific issues (SSI) to teach students how to think scientifically and to make good decisions…

Research on student thinking facilitates the design of instructional materials that build on student ideas. The pieces framework views student knowledge as consisting of independent pieces that students assemble in fluctuating ways based on the context at hand. This perspective affords important insights about the reasons students think the way…

In this experiment we investigated whether the presentation of domain principles within one text facilitates reading to learn from multiple exemplar texts that feature the importance of the principles. There were five texts about natural selection: a principles text, which described principles of natural selection, and four exemplar-based texts…

This article illustrates and differentiates the unique role cognitive interviews and think-aloud interviews play in developing and validating assessments. Specifically, we describe the use of (a) cognitive interviews to gather empirical evidence to support claims about the intended construct being measured and (b) think-aloud interviews to gather…

This article documents differences between novice and experienced undergraduate students' processes of reading mathematical proofs as revealed by moment-by-moment, think-aloud protocols. We found three key reading behaviors that describe how novices' reading differed from that of their experienced peers: alternative task models, accrual of…

The purpose of this study is to develop a thinking process model that reveals cognitive bias through analyzing students' cognitive biases in processing experimental manuals. Twenty-two college students participated in the study. During the "making electromagnets" experimental activity, we collected students' concurrent verbal protocols,…

The purpose of this study was to investigate bridging inferences and learning when students with low topic knowledge read multiple complementary biology texts. Using a think-aloud protocol, we assessed students' (n = 74) cognitive processes while they read one text about principles of natural selection and three texts about examples of natural…

This case examines the affordances and limitations of using a case-study protocol to investigate teaching interns' (undergraduates studying to be teachers) knowledge of culturally relevant teaching practice. As researchers, we sought to understand whether, and the extent to which, the case-study protocol enables teacher-educators to measure…

This study examines the moderating effects of a situational factor (i.e., text type) and an individual factor (i.e., subject-matter knowledge) on the relation between depth of processing and performance. One-hundred and fifty-one undergraduates completed measures of subject-matter knowledge, read either an expository or persuasive text about the…

A key highlight of this study is generating evidence of children "making aware the unaware", making tacit knowledge explicit. The research explores the levels of awareness in thinking used by eight 7-8 year-old children when engaged in school-based genre writing tasks. The focus is on analysing children's awareness of their thought…

The present study explores secondary school history teachers' knowledge of inquiry methods. To do so, a process model, outlining five core cognitive processes of inquiry in the history classroom, was developed based on a review of the literature. This process model was then used to analyze think-aloud protocols of 20 teachers' reasoning during an…

This study describes the possible variations of thought experiments in terms of their nature, purpose, and reasoning resources adopted during the solution of conceptual physics problems. A phenomenographic research approach was adopted for this study. Three groups of participants with varying levels of physics knowledge--low, medium, and high…

Background: Research is needed to explore conceptual change in relation to achievement goal orientations and depth of processing. Aims: To address this need, we examined relations between achievement goals, use of deep versus shallow processing strategies, and conceptual change learning using a think-aloud protocol. Sample and Method:…

A cognitive model of how teachers plan instruction was validated in laboratory settings but remained to be tested empirically in authentic situations. The objective of this work is to describe and compare pedagogical reasoning in laboratory and authentic contexts and across expertise levels. The "state-driven hypothesis" and the…

Information about how school principals operate pertains mainly to the actions of principals. However, the kinds of knowledge that the principalship demands have not been isolated as clearly, more often than not being conflated with actions. As principals' duties become more complex, it becomes more important to ground specific practices in robust…