Describes a study of 36 college juniors at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis to contrast how well students learn new concepts from working with a partner versus working individually on a computer-based lesson. Highlights include types of feedback chosen and an analysis of verbal interactions. (Author/LRW)

Records the attempts of a very young child to construct his own understanding of what it means to die and of the social impact of death within his own culture. Includes transcripts in which the child uses narrative to frame his first, tentative ideas about death and responds to literature to further extend his understanding. (JD)

Suggests having students act out descriptions of technical processes rather than write them. Argues that students will describe the process with more clarity and detail than in an ordinary report. (SRT)

This experiment examined the recall and recognition performance of 53 field-independent and 55 field-dependent learners who were with or without structure at the time of acquisition and/or at the time of recall. Patterns of performance were consistent with processing styles characteristic of field dependence-independence. (Author/LMO)

Discusses the problems encountered in training foreign language teachers, in particular the lack of behavioral objectives. Factors in setting up a teacher training course are considered. These include students' characteristics, the instructional team, reference room materials, classroom environment, course procedures and evaluation, and classroom…

Secondary physics students were interviewed to determine their expectations/actions in laboratory work. Results indicate preference for laboratory activities because such exercises help students remember, are less confusing, and more concrete. Use of the laboratory as an introduction to a concept, followed by discussion, was a key component to…

Investigates the transfer effects of graphic organizer instruction on fourth graders' ability to use top-level structure as an aid in comprehending and retaining content reading materials and concludes that there were no discernable effects. (DF)

Describes a metacognitive study method, LETME, designed to help students manage the entire study process by facilitating the understanding, selection, organization, retention, and analysis of information from expository text. (DF)

The article stresses the importance of teaching deaf children to think and learn through the development of meaning-making and meaning-sharing capacities. Classroom practices should thus be content focused and actively engage students in American Sign Language to develop general literacy. (CL)

The study examined the effects of training in question generation on comprehension question performance, on quality and form of generated questions, and on accuracy of predicted comprehension. Sixth-grade students trained in question generation outperformed four comparison groups on several comprehension and metacomprehension measures. (Author/LMO)

Describes how one teacher uses an integrative approach in making her day-to-day classroom decisions. A brief overview of the concerns and decisions characterizing this approach is followed by a description of how a third-grade teacher and her students mutually constructed a lesson about Japan. (BB)

A biochemistry examination administered to 114 dental students consisted of 20 items that measured knowledge and 18 items that measured either comprehension or application. Each item was written with five choices, half the class being presented the original version, half a content-similar derivative that included three choices. (Author/LMO)

Demonstrates how three- and four-year-old children's (N=20) learning of a completely novel route across a city district is enhanced by an accompanying adult making the child aware of potential landmarks. The importance of permanent/ephemeral landmarks in the child's verbal and modelled-map accounts of the route and educational implications are…

Explores how children become oriented to literacy and how their perceptions of the purpose of print develop as they move toward becoming more fluent users of print. (DF)

Discusses recent research in the development of spelling, the development of spelling ability, and invented spelling and the child's voice. (DF)