Discussions about transfer have mainly dealt with how people manage to do something in a situation thanks to having done something similar in a previous situation. From an educational point of view, however, it appears more fruitful to consider the case when the learner, having learned to do something in 1 situation, might be able to do something…

There is debate about whether preschool-age children interpret words as referring to kinds or to classes defined by shape similarity. The authors argue that the shape bias reported in previous studies is a task-induced artifact rather than a genuine word-learning strategy. In particular, children were forced to extend an object's novel label to…

Scaffolding has proven an especially interesting and promising area for supporting teaching and learning practices. Particular interest has emerged in scaffolding student learning in technology-enhanced environments. In this paper, we discuss how scaffolding is implemented in technology-enhanced environments, provide an overview of scaffolding…

Background: Self-report inventories trying to measure strategic processing at a global level have been much used in both basic and applied research. However, the validity of global strategy scores is open to question because such inventories assess strategy perceptions outside the context of specific task performance. Aims: The primary aim was to…

The research reported here investigated primary school pupils' use of reading strategies. The study differed from most of the previous studies on reading strategies in that (1) the participants were young bilinguals in multicultural Singapore; (2) the data were examined within the Student Approaches to Learning (SAL) framework developed by John…

The plethora of data that confronts teachers on a daily basis requires that they know more than simply being able to calculate. It demands that they understand the context in which the mathematical ideas are embedded and what those ideas are telling them in relation to that context. Also, it necessitates that they are prepared to question how…

The research on cooperative scripts is brought together using a model that provides an overview of the learning processes involved and the outcomes to be expected from the use of certain scripts. By providing such a framework, the wealth of research may be compared and generalized, thereby promoting its instructional utility. The Cognitive…

Inquiry teaching forces students to actively engage in articulating theories and principles that are critical to understanding a domain. Inquiry teachers have three distinct goals: (1) to help students construct a given theory or set of principles; (2) to help students construct novel theories or principles; and (3) to teach students how to pose…

This paper discusses the implications of Lucy Suchman's conclusion that a theory of situated action--i.e., the actual sense that specific users make out of specific Xeroxing events--is truer to the lived experience of Xerox users than a cognitive account of the user's plans--e.g., the hierarchy of subprocedures for how Xerox machines should be…

In the context of the currently developing theory of procedural knowledge and cognitive skill, the task of learning procedures from written instructions must involve the formation of production rules from the information available in the text. Since this process has not been explored in great depth, a study examined the relation of the production…

In Southern Wisconsin and Northern Illinois a group of schools has united together to form the Beloit Educational Computing Consortium (BECC). A recent survey of selected teachers in BECC schools indicated that even though the schools do not consciously set out to teach creativity via computers, substantial creative behavior is demonstrated by the…

An experimental study utilizing 96 black grade school children substantiates the hypothesis that learning efficiency improves as the learner elaborates on the raw material presented to him. Suggestions are offered for the implementation of new learning strategies based on this mental elaboration approach which may be especially valuable for…

The factors underlying memory performance in learning are shown to be affected by strategic processing and by automatic processing. Strategic processing is under the conscious control and effort of the learner while automatic processing is dependent on the strength of associations between new concepts and known concepts in a given domain.…

One hundred and fifty psychology students, assigned to five groups, used different learning strategies (repetition, paraphrasing, linking, grouping, and hierarchy) to study three structurally different chemistry texts. The strategies that demanded recognition of linked relationships as well as retention of this information increased students'…

Sixth grade students (N=8) identified as poor spellers significantly benefited from remedial instruction involving structural word analysis and self-questioning strategy, suggesting that effective spelling instruction involves conveying knowledge of phonics and the linguistic structure of words (domain specific knowledge) and knowledge of spelling…