Two thousand students from 66 academic departments in six contrasting disciplines from British colleges completed an "approaches to studying" inventory and a course perceptions questionnaire. The implications of these findings are discussed in relation to ways in which the organization of teaching and courses may affect students'…

Encoding voice information is a cognitively effortful, age sensitive process. For older adults, enhanced voice encoding under the intentional condition, relative to the incidental condition, was accompanied by a significant decrement in sentence recall. The age difference apparently reflects the diminished processing capacity of older adults.…

A comparison was made between older youth and a sample of retired elderly relative to response confidence in a multiple-choice task situation. Analysis indicated that both age groups utilized feedback effectively over the two retention conditions and that both groups expressed similar levels of confidence for the specific task. (Author)

First graders were taught to read words either in printed sentence contexts or printed singly on flash cards. Post-test scores indicated that context-trained children learned more about the semantic identities of printed words, while flash card-trained children could read the words faster and learned more about orthographic forms. (JMB)

Used a children's story and interviews to compare how six-year-olds in three cultures conceptualize learning in their preschool environments. Found that Swedish and Japanese children who did not recall a coherent narrative relied on their own understanding of point of story rather than on words of story, whereas Chinese children looked for key to…

Compares learning via hypertext courseware and lecture-based teaching. Surveys three groups of students at the University of Kent (England) who were taught by hypertext only, lecture-based teaching only, or hypertext and lecture-based teaching. Results indicate that learning in a hypertext environment is similar to traditional lecture courses.…

Argues that mathematical learning should be viewed as a process of active individual construction and a process of enculturation into the mathematical practices of wider society. It further argues that the sociocultural perspective theorizes the conditions for the possibility of learning, whereas constructivist perspectives focus on what students…

Comparison of the conceptions of learning of 60 nursing students and 54 auto mechanic students, elicited in individual interviews at program beginning and end, found qualitative differences and similarities. Differences within an educational program were fewer than those among students participating in different programs. Among students within a…

Two experiments found that German-speaking dyslexic 9-year-olds showed impaired learning of pseudonames in several visual-verbal learning tasks, even when phonological retrieval cues were provided and when pseudonames were presented in spoken and printed form. There was no deficit when short, familiar words were used, and no difficulty in…

Two experiments assessed visuomotor sequence learning in 4- to 10-year-olds using a serial reaction time (SRT) task with random and sequenced trials. Found that children demonstrated sequence-specific decreases in RT. Participants with explicit awareness of the sequence at the session's end showed larger sequence-specific RT decrements than…

This article reports 2 experiments examining the changing role of iconicity in symbol learning and its implications regarding the mechanisms supporting symbol-to-referent mapping. Experiment 1 compared 18- and 26-month-olds' mapping of iconic gestures (e.g., hopping gesture for a rabbit) vs. arbitrary gestures (e.g., dropping motion for a rabbit).…

This exploratory research study examined the impact of using feedback from weekly multiple-choice tests on final exam scores and students' IDEA course ratings. The teacher researcher taught two sections (N=33; N=34) of a graduate-level, semester-long, online course in advanced human growth and development. Each section had identical course…

Based on the idea that learning is linked to personal relevance, this study examined knowledge retention of exercise physiology content between college athletes and nonathletes. No differences were observed between the groups. These findings have implications on understanding the relationship between personal relevance and memory. (Contains 1…

The purpose of this study was to investigate how some ways of making sense of the world get privileged over others when teachers and students use specific educational films in specific learning environments. The methods of formalist and ideological film analysis are used to describe how educational films are distinct in their form and style from…

In a study of very young children's pronunciation of nouns and verbs, ten children aged 20 to 25 months were exposed to experimental nouns and verbs, which had not yet been comprehended or produced by the children. Each of the objects and actions was given an experimental name based on phonemes in the children's speech. These objects and actions…