Three eperiments assessed the effects on strategy transfer of supplements to keyword method instruction; supplements included more comprehensive instructions concerning strategy application, additional practice with strategy during instruction, and combined directions and practice. Generally, results indicated that more explicit instructions are…

Two types of elaboration are reviewed as potent strategies for the learning disabled: (1) modifications to make materials more learnable and (2) recommendations about elaborative strategies that learners can execute. A model of autonomous and flexible strategy use is presented with emphasis on efficient strategy application. (DB)

In a qualitative, multiple case study, we explored the challenges and successes teachers encounter while participating in a professional development program aimed at improving their reading comprehension instruction so as to increase students' self-regulated use of comprehension strategies. We documented five fifth grade teachers' experiences as…

Introduces the topic of strategies education, summarizing the contributions to this special issue on strategies education. Emphasizes the importance of collaborations between researchers and practitioners to ensure that strategies education programs are practical and implementable. (MDM)

Many learning strategies endorsed by curriculum and instruction publications have never demonstrated their worth in objective experimental evaluations. Most researchers agree that cognitive strategies should be taught in conjunction with content and in response to learner needs and capabilities. Teacher modeling and self-regulation lie at the…

Children 6- to ll-years-old heard concrete sentences which they were asked to learn. Half the children received imagery instruction. Greater short-term memory and verbal competence predicted better sentence learning in the imagery condition, but not in the control condition. (Author/NH)

The keyword method of vocabulary learning was compared with five methods designed to increase semantic processing of the definitions of vocabulary words. The method enhanced vocabulary/definition (associative) learning, but not definition (response) learning per se. In contrast, the semantic conditions tended to increase nonassociative learning of…

Sixteen teachers were surveyed to assess the acceptability of various reading comprehension strategies teachable during middle-to-late elementary school years. The teachers rated "prior knowledge activation" as most acceptable, followed by "representational imagery" and "question generation." Ratings should be a prominent consideration in deciding…

Proposes a theoretical psychological model for strategy instruction. Describes the complexity of the profile of a competent strategy user. Comments on important strategy instruction. (DE)

Elaborative interrogation was compared to the construction of imaginary representations to determine its efficacy in fact learning. Four experiments, involving a total of 260 undergraduate students, indicated that elaborative interrogation is equally as powerful a learning procedure as is imaginary representation and that both are useful during…

Describes some recent studies which establish that meaningful learning can be promoted by a certain type of questioning activity, called elaborative interrogation, that leads students to activate prior knowledge and tie it to the new information. (SR)

Imagery and sentence versions of the key word method of vocabulary learning were contrasted with three nonkey word verbal-contextual alternatives using strict, intermediate, and lenient scoring criteria. Definition learning in the key word conditions, imagery more so than verbal, was superior to learning in all nonkey word conditions, especially…

Discusses strategies designed to improve elementary school children's memory and comprehension of text. The strategies include summarization, representation, mnemonic imagery, story grammar, question generation, question answering, and prior knowledge activation. (RJC)

The article addresses what is regarded as unjustifiably pessimistic characterizations of memory strategy instructional research, and argues that solid laboratory research on strategy use is needed though much memory instructional research with direct classroom applications to learning-disabled students has been completed. (Author/DB)

The keyword method was compared to the context method of learning new vocabulary in two experiments with undergraduate subjects. In both experiments the keyword method produced significantly greater definition recall. Implications for vocabulary learning theories in particular, and discovery learning approaches in general, are discussed.…