This study investigated eight prekindergarten teachers' underlying assumptions about how children learn, and how these assumptions were used to inform and enact instruction. By contextualizing teachers' knowledge and understanding as it is used in practice we were able to provide unique insight into the work of teaching. Participants focused on…

With use of self-assessment (SA) of young language learners on the rise, educators of young learners often want to know what SA captures and how best to use it in order to assist their students' learning. This study focuses on understanding how young learners' processes for responding to SA items differ by age and by context of implementation…

Meaning-making and sense-making are generally assumed to be part of students' personal vocational knowledge development, since they contribute to both students' socialisation in a vocation and students' personalisation of concepts, values and beliefs regarding that vocation. However, how students in vocational education acquire meaning and make…

This study reports on how student teachers' workplace experiences were transformed into learning experiences. In total, 26 stories from 10 student teachers were collected by means of digital logs and in-depth interviews and unraveled using a new technique of reconstructing stories into webs. In these webs, the factors that played a role in student…

Both cognitive and sociocultural traditions have customarily theorised learning in terms of processes of progression within single communities. More recently, educational scholars have started to focus on learning as a horizontal process of boundary crossing between multiple communities. A problem of this approach is that boundaries are often laid…

This paper reports on a study of primary contextualization processes during science immersion trips and the resultant student learning. Four High School Ecology classes (n?=?67) and teachers participated. Through a pre-/post-assessment of science concept knowledge (Pathfinder Network Modeling) and follow-up interviews with students, it was…

This dissertation reports on student learning and students' perceptions of learning in contextualized composition courses at a Midwestern community college. The teacher-scholar who conducted the research taught four different contextualized composition courses for occupational program students and collected various forms of data, including student…

This dissertation explores the experiences of culturally diverse interactions and learning in adult cohorts. A cohort is defined as a group of students who enter a program of study together and complete a series of common learning experiences during a specified period of time (Saltiel & Russo, 2001). There is much research on the general use,…

This paper presents a multilingual mobile learning framework that can be used to support the pedagogical development of mobile learning systems which can support learning in under-resourced multilingual schools. The framework has been developed following two empirical mobile learning studies. Both studies were conducted in multilingual South…

Articles in this special issue present recent advances in using state-of-the-art software systems that gather data with which to examine and measure features of learning and particularly self-regulated learning (SRL). Despite important advances, there remain challenges. I examine key features of SRL and how they are measured using common tools. I…

This research report investigates the links between formal, non-formal and informal learning and the differences between them. In particular, the report aims to link these notions of learning to the field of sciences and engineering in Canada and the United States, including professional development of adults working in these fields. It offers…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to explore the perceptions of community college faculty regarding their experiences in learning and implementing a new pedagogical concept, Universal Design for Instruction (UDI). Specifically, I explored (a) their perceptions regarding the utilization of the UDI concept on their teaching strategies, (b)…

In this paper the influence of the learning context is considered when learning to program. For the purposes of this study, the lectures, study process, previous knowledge or teaching experience and tests comprised the learning context. The article argues that students' experiences of the learning context have important implications for teaching…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the development of the learning experiences of gifted young string players in Taiwan. Nine musicians under the age of 40, who had been accepted into music programs for the gifted, were invited to discuss their experiences and the development of their careers. Thorough interviews were conducted and then…

This article is a summary of the findings of a research project that included ten older rural adults from a county in south Georgia. The research focused on self-directed learning. The researcher conducted two interviews with each participant over a two day period. The findings focused around four research questions: what is the nature of…