Generating own examples for previously encountered new concepts is a common and highly effective learning activity, at least when the examples are of high quality. Unfortunately, however, students are not able to accurately evaluate the quality of their own examples and instructional support measures such as idea unit standards that have been…

Multilingual college students often struggle with writing and revising for academic purposes. This dissertation explored the effectiveness of a Concept-Based Language Instruction (C-BLI) approach to teaching revision processes to college-level multilingual writers. Although a significant body of research exists on effective feedback on…

Purpose: As online learning has become more prevalent, how learners interact with each other in those learning environments has become more salient. To develop effective levels of interaction, students must feel comfortable to express their ideas and views. For this reason, this paper aims to look at how individual students' levels of social…

We investigate the hypothesis that our conceptual systems provide two formally distinct ways of representing categories by investigating the manner in which lexical nominals (e.g., "tree," "picnic table") and phrasal nominals (e.g., "black bird," "birds that like rice") are interpreted. Four experiments found that lexical nominals may be mapped…

This study tested for deep understanding and critical thinking about basic quantum chemical concepts taught at 12th grade (age 17-18). Our aim was to achieve conceptual change in students. A quantitative study was conducted first (n = 125), and following this 23 selected students took part in semi-structured interviews either individually or in…

This paper presents a challenge to a widely cited report by Elkind which states that a large proportion of college students, particularly females, are unable to conserve volume. (BD)

Two studies of 7-year-olds and college students tested the hypothesis of a developmental difference in the degree to which subjects' memory performance was controlled by categorical properties vs. specific instance properties of test items. (GO)

Investigated the intercorrelations among tasks that appear to require Piagetian formal reasoning to determine whether formal reasoning is used selectively or all-pervasively. Subjects were 60 undergraduate females. (SDH)

Discusses a teaching experiment with (n=19) senior and graduate mathematics students. Analysis suggests that students' difficulties with the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus stem from impoverished concepts of rate of change and from poorly developed and coordinated images of functional covariation and multiplicatively constructed quantities.…

Two experiments were conducted to assess the nature and extent of children's knowledge about the density of objects. In the first experiment, 18 children 3- to 5-years-old were shown 8 objects which were placed in water 1 at a time. The children were later asked to judge whether the objects would sink or float when placed in water. Findings…

In two experiments, 5-, 7-, and 11-year-old children and college students were presented on each trial with a sentence followed by a probe word. The children's task was to indicate whether the probe was in the sentence or not. (MS)

The objectives of this study were to: examine the potential interaction between students' epistemological beliefs and placement in a simulation condition (constructivist versus non-constructivist) on conceptual development; and to assess whether a constructivist computer simulation experience would result in a greater degree of conceptual change…

Children in grades 1, 3, and 5 and college students were given a variety of judgment tasks contrasting the comparison of quantity with the comparison of proportions to determine whether the understanding of proportions develops before formal operations. Results indicated that the comprehension of abstract relations requires formal operations.…