Agentic engagement, or attempts to proactively influence instruction, predicts positive classroom climate and students' motivation. As such, it is a potentially effective target for intervention, though causal evidence is limited. This investigation explored whether an agentic orientation could be cultivated through a brief, online intervention…

The sequence in which problems of different concepts are studied during instruction impacts concept learning. For example, several problems of a given concept can be studied together (blocking) or several problems of different concepts can be studied together (interleaving). In the current study, we demonstrate that the 2 sequences impact concept…

There are many promising psychological interventions on the horizon, but there is no clear methodology for preparing them to be scaled up. Drawing on design thinking, the present research formalizes a methodology for redesigning and tailoring initial interventions. We test the methodology using the case of fixed versus growth mindsets during the…

A considerable amount of research has been undertaken to provide insights into the valid assessment of team performance. However, in many settings, manual and therefore labor-intensive assessment instruments for team performance have limitations. Therefore, automated assessment instruments enable more flexible and detailed insights into the…

Three experiments investigated the ability of 79 college students to solve similar algebra word problems. Data indicate that students are able to perceive and use similarities in such problems at the level of a conceptual structure. A training session to explain relevant structural principles was effective in improving performance. (SLD)

This study investigated whether good novice problem solvers have their knowledge arranged around problem types to a greater extent than poor problem solvers have. Twelve problem types (see appendix) were distinguished according to underlying physics principles and 65 knowledge elements were printed on cards for university students to sort.…

This study was concerned with assessing knowledge of concept interrelationships. Comparisons were made between performance on the concept comparison task (making a comparative judgment in the form of a rating on each pair of a set of concept labels) and essay test performance. (Author/PN)

This article presents a new method of inferring students' cognitive structures and their development. A modification of Reitman and Rueter's "ordered tree technique," the method generates a structure that displays important relationships assumed to be in a student's memory about concepts taken from a specific field of study. (Author/LMO)

Individual differences and the role of advance organizers in reading comprehension were examined. Subjects read short passages sometimes preceded by a given type of advance organizer. Good readers showed greater recall of detail given either type of advance organizer; poor readers displayed enhanced recall of detail only for a particular type of…

New methods for representing the structural properties of domain-specific knowledge were studied. Network representations of data from 40 college students' ratings of the relatedness of domain concepts were derived using the Pathfinder scaling algorithm, and similarity between students' and instructor's networks was then assessed using a…

Using 198 college students, this study investigated the effects on performance of four variables in a concept-learning task. The variables were (1) passive and active learning; (2) contextual specificity and variability; (3) rule-examples sequences; and (4) near and far transfers as critical outcomes. Results are discussed in terms of the…

This article examines naive conceptions of spatial reference that children bring to Logo programing language learning. Students from Grades 4, 5, 6, and 8 were introduced to six Logo commands, and then were tested on predicting the output for instances of each of the commands. (Author/LMO)

This study attempts to understand the American and Japanese cultural and ethnic differences in student's mathematics scores from the perspective of differential cognitive organization of number resulting from differences in primary-language characteristics. The relation between cognitive representation of number and mathematics achievement are…

Principles of W. Kintsch's reading comprehension model (1978, 1980) were used to revise an expository text. Two experiments with 170 undergraduates and 125 Air Force recruits indicated that the principled revision conveyed the author's intentions better than the original text, suggesting the model's use for text improvement. (SLD)