Explaining new ideas to oneself can promote learning and transfer, but questions remain about how to maximize the pedagogical value of self-explanations. This study investigated how type of instruction affected self-explanation quality and subsequent learning outcomes for second- through fifth-grade children learning to solve mathematical…

The Progress in Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) was developed to help improve the teaching of reading and the acquisition of reading skills around the world, and was approved by the IEA (International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement) General Assembly as an essential component of the IEA's regular cycle of core studies,…

The purpose of this study was to research the purported effects of reduction of "mind set" and achievement of greater consistency in data classification when using Simon's Problem-Solving Approach. (Author/JC)

Describes four encounters--with a doctoral student, a primary grade teacher, a child, and a sociolinguist--to illustrate how teaching and learning, two separate ventures, are sometimes confused with one another. (HTH)

Analyzes adult literacy students' utilization of orthographic and phonological strategies to read sight words, to decode nonwords, to spell words, and to detect rhyming words. Indicates that when encountering difficulties adults were less likely than children to use phonological strategies and were more likely than children to rely on visual or…

This study investigated the tendency of deaf children (ages 6-13) not to spontaneously use active memory strategies such as rehearsal. Comparison of 38 deaf and 39 hearing students found that deaf students compensated for less effective rehearsal strategies by capitalizing on unique spatial features of the task. (Author/DB)

Two experiments compared the effectiveness of two separate mnemonic devices for learning the states and their capitals--one a complex key word system using substitute words for each syllable, the other a simple key word device interacting key words from the state and capital names in an illustration. In the first experiment, 88 fourth and fifth…

The open classroom movement is in serious danger of being misunderstood because so few people know what it is really all about. (Editor)

This study compared effectiveness of cognitive modeling with and without verbalization in teaching 60 learning-disabled elementary students efficient questioning strategies. Results indicated that both groups showed significant reductions from pretreatment to posttreatment in the number of questions required but no effectiveness differential…

Reports on a study that suggests that eight- through ten-year-old disabled readers may differ from normal readers, both in their ability to recall sequences of letters and in their ability to shorten the recall task by perceiving recognizable spelling patterns as meaningful groups. (GW)

Reports classroom observations and dialogues with children that show children's understandings and use of punctuation; reports data showing that children in a class in which punctuation was taught in the context of writing learned more about punctuation than children in a class in which it was taught in isolation. (ET)

Affirms that Piaget's theory is superior to behaviorism in fostering learning. (FL)

This paper compares three analyses of stimulated-recall data gathered in interviews with 24 elementary school teachers who were reporting their interactive decision making (IDM). Two analyses were quantitative--one an experimental design, the other a content analysis--and one was qualitative. The experimental study found that teachers' reflection…

Student perceptions of learning environments in 15 inner city schools in a large public school system and 7 nationally distributed comparison schools are examined in this empirical exploratory study. The "My Class Inventory" was administered to fourth grade students in all schools on a pre and post test basis in order to examine changes over a one…

A reliable instrument was developed to identify elementary-age children who have difficulty with time estimation, as indicated by choices on a pencil-and-paper test. The instrument was used to compare performances of learning disabled and nondisabled children. Findings provide empirical support for temporal difficulties among learning disabled…