The author presents a three-step process for selecting participants for any study of a social phenomenon that occurs between people in locations and at times that are difficult to observe. The process is described with illustrative examples from a previous study of help giving in a community of learners. This paper includes a rationale for…

This article reports on using open-response questions to reveal the level of, and change in, conceptual understanding of a small sample of Grade 11 learners of trigonometry in a South African high school. The investigation used learner response sheets in a regular classroom with the teacher as researcher. Combining the idea of concept image and…

The purpose of this study was to use multiple assessments to investigate the general versus task-specific characteristics of metacognition in dissimilar chemistry topics. This mixed-method approach investigated the nature of undergraduate general chemistry students' metacognition using four assessments: a self-report questionnaire, assessment of…

Climatic hazards are a key feature of life. It is vital that teachers are knowledgeable about these phenomena in order to develop their students' understanding of them. This study used a mixed methods approach to examine the accuracy and depth of preservice primary teachers' (n = 430) knowledge of tropical cyclones. The findings suggest that…

Visualizing the chemical structure and dynamics of particles has been challenging for many students; therefore, various visualizations and tools have been used in chemistry education. For science educators, it has been important to understand how students visualize and represent particular phenomena--i.e., their mental models-- to design more…

The study described in this article was prompted by the poor performance of students in an "at risk subject" in a science faculty at a university in South Africa. Teacher performance could contribute to poor performance among students, therefore the performance of one of the science teachers whose students were performing poorly was…

Our study contributes to our understanding of Internet reading by Emergent Bilinguals (EB) and Native English speakers (NS) by investigating their recall of two Internet reading passages containing additional information available through either hypertext links or footnotes. Participants included 25 EB and 25 NS college students. Answers to cued…

Decisions on both personal and public matters benefit significantly if uncertainties and risks are handled with more care and accuracy. It is crucial to refine and express degrees of confidence and subjective probabilities of various outcomes. Experience, intuition, and skills help make the most of uncertain information. This paper proposes a…

This is a research study conducted on 17 teachers who teach English in Saudi international schools. It mainly aims at exploring teaching practices in these schools in terms of the principles of communicative language teaching (CLT). It also investigates the appropriateness of CLT in this context from the point of view of teachers. Two research…

This study explores asynchronous online discussions as a learning strategy for Japanese EFL students from various perspectives. A text analysis of learner posts and replies was performed to determine the quantity, quality, and accuracy of the written language produced. Student participation rates during all four online exchanges were measured to…