Emotional intelligence plays a great role in human adaptation to social environments. The individual level of emotional skills depends on one's genes, family environment, and socialisation, as well as personal experience and education. The purpose of the present study was to examine the educational influence of mental simulation in developing the…

In this exercise, an actual chemical reaction, oxidation of iron in air, is studied along with a related analogue simulation of that reaction. The rusting of steel wool is carried out as a class effort. The parallel simulation is performed by students working in small groups. The analogue for the reacting gas is a countable set of discrete marble…

In the process of design, refinement and selection of the software required for mentally retarded students' education, the characteristics of students should be taken into consideration. Mobile application software can be used as a supplementary material in the education of students who need special education. Many studies reveal that computer…

We present a logistic function of a monotonic polynomial with a lower asymptote, allowing additional flexibility beyond the three-parameter logistic model. We develop a maximum marginal likelihood based approach to estimate the item parameters. The new item response model is demonstrated on math assessment data from a state, and a computationally…

Upon defining the terms modeling and simulation, it becomes apparent that there is a wide variety of different models, using different techniques, appropriate for different levels of representation for any one system to be modeled. Selecting an appropriate conceptual modeling technique from those available is an open question for the practitioner.…

The authors introduced nominal weights mean equating, a simplified version of Tucker equating, as an alternative for dealing with very small samples. The authors then conducted three simulation studies to compare nominal weights mean equating to six other equating methods under the nonequivalent groups anchor test design with sample sizes of 20,…

Museums offering archaeological programs often attempt to use the "sandbox approach" to simulate archaeological excavation work. However, in light of the definition of simulation, and given the realities of actual professional practice in archaeological excavation, the author argues that the activity of troweling for artifacts in loose sand places…

This study explores the effect of an innovative course examining Greek elementary student teachers' (STs') efficacy beliefs and self-confidence for curriculum-based teaching on "Studies for the Environment" topics. These two variables are influencing teachers' ability to teach environmental issues for young children. Five new factors…

The incorporation of video technology in teacher education programmes is increasingly prevalent, with teacher educators commonly using three traditional forms of videos: published video, preservice teachers' own videos and colleagues' videos. This study explored a fourth type of video, self-created scripted video simulations in which preservice…

Based on the data of Program for International Student Assessment 2009, this paper examines how various aspects of home literacy environment, school climate and students' reading engagement related to their reading performance. A profile of Hong Kong students' three indices of reading engagement -- namely, reading enjoyment, reading diversity and…

Understanding spoken words involves a rapid mapping from speech to conceptual representations. One distributed feature-based conceptual account assumes that the statistical characteristics of concepts' features--the number of concepts they occur in ("distinctiveness/sharedness") and likelihood of co-occurrence ("correlational…

American students graduate from college with tens of thousands of dollars in debt, leading to substantial repayment burdens and potentially inefficient shifts in spending patterns and career choices. A political trend towards austerity coupled with the rising student debt make the effective allocation of federal higher education resources and…

Students frequently expressed difficulty in understanding the molecular mechanisms involved in chromosomal recombination. Therefore, we explored alternative methods for presenting the two concepts of the double-strand break model: Holliday junction and heteroduplex formation, and Holliday junction resolution. In addition to a lecture and…

Components of complex systems apply across multiple subject areas, and teaching these components may help students build unifying conceptual links. Students, however, often have difficulty learning these components, and limited research exists to understand what types of interventions may best help improve understanding. We investigated 32 high…

The study examined the effect of simulation technique and lecture method on students' academic performance in Mafoni Day Secondary School, Maiduguri. The study used both simulation technique and lecture methods of teaching at the basic level of education in the teaching/learning environment. The study aimed at determining the best predictor among…