This study analyzes the effect of text-inserted questions and post-text-reading questions, i.e., questions timing, on students' processing and learning when studying challenging texts. Seventy-six freshmen read two science texts and answered ten adjunct questions with the text available, being tested on learning 5 days afterwards. Questions were…

Organic chemistry is a class well known to be difficult and necessary for many careers in the sciences, and as a result, has garnered interest in researching ways to improve student learning and comprehension. One potential way involves using eye tracking techniques to understand how students visually examine questions. Organic chemistry involves…

This convergent mixed-methods study explored the relation between strategies fourth-grade students self-reported to navigate and interpret science texts and their performance on a comprehension posttest. Using Epistemic Network Analysis (ENA), results reveal a higher degree of metacognitive awareness and the ability to orally explain one's…

The discovery of and research into penicillin resistance by Sir Edward Abraham and Sir Ernst Chain can be used to teach the concept of natural selection and also multiple nature of science (NOS) objectives associated with Next Generation Science Standards, such as "scientific knowledge is based on empirical evidence" and "science is…

In this study, we used eye-tracking methodology for deeper understanding of the refutation text effect on online text comprehension. A refutation text acknowledges the reader's alternative conceptions about a phenomenon, refutes them and presents the correct conceptions. We tested two hypotheses about its facilitation effect: the coherence…

This study examines the extent to which instructions to self-explain vs. "other"-explain a text lead readers to produce different forms of explanations. Natural language processing was used to examine the content and characteristics of the explanations produced as a function of instruction condition. Undergraduate students (n = 146)…

Researchers have highlighted how tracking learners' eye-gaze can reveal their reading behaviors and strategies, and this provides a framework for developing personalized feedback to improve learning and problem solving skills. In this paper, we describe analyses of eye-gaze data collected from 16 middle school students who worked with Betty's…

This study extends current research on the refutation text effect by investigating it in learners with different levels of working memory capacity. The purpose is to outline the link between online processes (revealed by eye fixation indices) and off-line outcomes in these learners. In science education, unlike a standard text, a refutation text…

A new generation of students should learn from e-materials on tablets, notebooks and smart phones. This consequently means that teachers must be competent to teach new literacies, needed for reading/learning from PDF texts, hypertexts and/or World Wide Web. The presented research investigated future teachers' metacognitive awareness in the process…

The aim of the study was to investigate the role of regulation and processing strategies in understanding science text. A total of 91 student teachers answered open-ended questions concerning photosynthesis before and after reading either a traditional or a refutational science text. After this, they also answered parts of the Inventory of…

Describes a fictional science classroom/learning experience in which the teacher expresses mild surprise and pleasure at the way the children tend to steer the learning process themselves when they have a relevant purpose in mind. Argues that learning involves being able to express what one knows. (KEH)

Reports on participant-observation in a third- and fourth-grade classroom in which students learned to read science texts with both "efferent" and "aesthetic" reading processes. (HTH)