Researchers have asked college students how they study, and the results show that most use four inefficient strategies that do not often work: (1) reading assigned chapter, trying to understand individual sentences as he goes but not necessarily ensuring he's got the overall gist; (2) marking what he takes to be important points with a…

A robust finding in the literature is that spacing material leads to better retention than massing; however, the benefit of spacing for concept learning is less clear. When items are massed, it may help the learner to discover the relationship between instances, leading to better abstraction of the underlying concept. Two experiments addressed…

The purpose of this study was to investigate elementary school pre-service teachers' understanding of photosynthesis and to examine if a refutational text can support understanding of photosynthesis better than a non-refutational text. A total of 91 elementary school pre-service teachers read either a refutational or a non-refutational text…

This paper examines several ways in which teaching effectiveness and student learning in an undergraduate Business Statistics course can be enhanced. First, we review some key concepts in Business Statistics that are often challenging to teach and show how using real data sets assist students in developing deeper understanding of the concepts.…

Using 198 college students, this study investigated the effects on performance of four variables in a concept-learning task. The variables were (1) passive and active learning; (2) contextual specificity and variability; (3) rule-examples sequences; and (4) near and far transfers as critical outcomes. Results are discussed in terms of the…

Discusses issues and problems concerning concept development among students in elementary social studies programs. Suggests good teaching uses analogies and metaphors to facilitate learning. Recommends illustrating key concepts through myths, fables, and parables. Argues that using stories that show how things work allows students to apply the…

Examines the scientific concept of evaporation. Attempts to show how students develop their understanding through the levels of the Structure of the Observed Learning Outcome (SOLO) taxonomy. Shows how designing learning experiences to suit the learners' developmental stages in understanding a concept is paramount to the overall growth of the…

The purpose of this study was to introduce the Mole Solver, a computer based system that facilitates monitors and improves the students' problems solving skills on mole concept. The system has three distinct modes that: i) finds step by step solutions to the word problems on the mole concept ii) enable students' to solve word problems on their own…

Investigated seven-year-old children's understanding of certain geographical terms. Found that children this age have considerable difficulty with some concepts and that even vernacular terms are often misunderstood. Results support the idea of children's alternative conceptions and suggest that, for teaching to be more effective, children's prior…

The effectiveness of traditional models of remedial education of students has been called into question. Current research supports models that would merge remedial and regular education and provide all students with broad curriculum access and the opportunity to receive instruction that is adaptive to their needs. Guidelines for addressing…

Presents a scripted lesson plan for intermediate grades, based on M.C. Wittrock's model of generative teaching derived from brain lateralization research. Uses a shopping mall as the setting for hypothetical dilemmas. Offers a combination of verbal and imagined strategies that improve students' economic reasoning and teaches cost-benefit analysis.…

This paper describes an instructional approach for language minority students in high school science and social studies--using explanatory models or graphical representations of disciplinary concepts to guide students systematically as they construct a concept or conceptual relationship. Data came from a longitudinal study of two successive groups…