This study addresses the question of why spellings determined by morphology are relatively hard to acquire by presenting a latent class model of children's acquisition of a doublet of consonants in the spelling of Dutch verbs. This spelling pattern can be determined either by a phonological rule (after a short vowel, a doublet is spelled) or a…

The purpose of the study was to investigate video comprehension strategies used by male and female university students. The researcher designed a video comprehension strategy questionnaire including cognitive, compensation, and memory categories. Totally, 168 Taiwanese university participants completed the questionnaire. The quantitative results…

Understanding the user and customizing the interface to augment cognition and usability are goals of human computer interaction research and design. Yet, little is known about the influence of individual visual-verbal information presentation preferences on visual navigation and screen element usage. If consistent differences in visual navigation…

The focus of this special issue is on the cognitive load underlying processes of interactive knowledge construction in a wide range of instructional multimedia platforms. Multimedia comprehension involves the parallel processing of auditory-verbal and visual-pictorial channels within working memory. By means of integrating multimodal information,…

The term "inquiry" can be viewed from two perspectives. Inquiry refers to the abilities students develop when designing and conducting investigations and the understanding they gain through this process about the nature of science. Inquiry also refers to teaching and learning strategies that enable students to master content concepts. Library…

What should be done to improve the critical thinking skills of preservice and inservice teachers is outlined. (MT)

Category number effects on rule-based and information-integration category learning were investigated. Category number affected accuracy and the distribution of best-fitting models in the rule-based task but had no effect on accuracy and little effect on the distribution of best-fining models in the information-integration task. In the 2 category…

This article presents 3 studies that examine how students and experts employ mental rotation and a learned heuristic to solve chemistry tasks that involve spatial information. Results from Study 1 indicate that despite instruction in analytical strategies, students choose to employ mental rotation on canonical assessment tasks. In Study 2, experts…

Over the past 30 years, researchers at the Freudenthal Institute in The Netherlands have developed a mathematics curriculum and a theory of pedagogy known as Realistic Maths Education (RME). This curriculum uses "imaginable" contexts to help pupils to develop mathematically, with a strong emphasis on pupils "making sense" of…

This study investigates algebraic reasoning and self-regulation skills among elementary school teachers who participated in a professional development program either with IMPROVE metacognitive questioning (PD + Meta) or with no metacognitive guidance (PD). Sixty-four Israeli teachers participated in a 3-year program designed to enhance…

Social cognitive theory emphasizes a dynamic interactive process to explain human functioning. This theory ascribes a central role to cognitive processes in which the individual can observe others and the environment, reflect on that in combination with his or her own thoughts and behaviors, and alter his or her own self-regulatory functions…

Students in the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields are confronted with multiple external representations (MERs) in their learning materials. The ability to learn from and communicate with these MERs requires not only that students comprehend each representation individually but also that students recognize how the…

In an embedded cognitive-strategy system, learners are forced to use a given cognitive strategy prepared by the instructor, designer, or researcher. In a generative cognitive-strategy system, learners are directed to generate a certain cognitive strategy activator by themselves. This is a review of experimental and theoretical studies conducted on…

A comprehensive thinking skills scope and sequence plan provides three types of information. It identifies the thinking skills and strategies to be learned throughout the curriculum, locates them in the subject areas where they are to be taught, and arranges them in the proper sequence. This article describes basic principles and guidelines for…

Explores how people's understanding of a material is created and developed as they interact with it to find effective ways of promoting better image development when no prior information about a device is available. Reports that models from good learners who finished the task quickly were coherent and centered around the notion of…