Previous research has shown that students' existing conceptions are critical to subsequent learning because there is interaction between the new knowledge that the students encounter and their existing knowledge from previous lessons. Taber (1999a) found A-level students in the UK had difficulty in understanding the principles determining the…

If teachers are expected to change their teaching behaviors, attitudes, and beliefs, they need to be involved in interactive, sustained, job-embedded approaches to learning. Research shows how the brain works and what reinforcements it needs to retain information and translate that to practice.

The aim of this research was to evaluate and analyse second-year industrial engineering and chemical engineering students prior knowledge of conceptual aspects of "circuit theory". Specifically, we focused on the basic concepts of electric potential and current intensity and on the fundamental relationship between them as expressed by Ohm's law.…

This article is concerned with the effects that growing numbers of mature students have on the pedagogical practices of lecturing staff in the Institutes of Technology in Ireland. It is predicted by the Commission on the Points System and Mature Students that mature student enrolment may reach 15% by 2006, increasing to 25% by 2015. Lecturers in…

This project was coordinated and funded by the California Partnership for Achieving Student Success (Cal-PASS). Cal-PASS is a data sharing system linking all segments of education. Its purpose is to improve student transition and success from one educational segment to the next. Cal-PASS' math deconstruction projects were initiated by the faculty…

This project was coordinated and funded by the California Partnership for Achieving Student Success (Cal-PASS). Cal-PASS is a data sharing system linking all segments of education. Its purpose is to improve student transition and success from one educational segment to the next. Cal-PASS' standards deconstruction project was initiated by the…

Designed to explore what is being done to help learning disabled (LD) readers develop comprehension skills, this paper reviews research in teaching reading comprehension to LD students and develops generalizations from the research to guide reading comprehension instruction for such students. The 10 generalizations presented and discussed in the…

Intended for use in undergraduate and graduate courses in reading methods, as well as by classroom teachers, this book brings together teaching strategies and materials suggested by recent developments in the study of reading comprehension. Each of the eight chapters includes the background and rationale for the practices described. The first…

Part of a research project designed to develop a theory of the cognitive processes involved in skilled reading by the analysis of the location and duration of eye fixations, this paper concentrates on how eye fixations can be used to determine when encoding, lexical access, parsing, and integration processes are executed and how they are affected…

A study was conducted to examine the effects of prescribing the use of some specific reading strategies on comprehension. The effects of such prescription on the interactions among instructional method and a number of individual difference variables were also investigated. Subjects were 140 high school students randomly assigned to read a text…

A study investigated the effectiveness of using thematic organizers to increase the reading comprehension of poor readers. The thematic organizer was used to expand the readers' prior knowledge by defining the implied thematic concept and presenting relevant examples of that concept. Twenty-four fourth, fifth, and sixth grade students who had been…

A functional typology of verbal instructional tasks for advanced classroom instruction and inservice training is described and illustrated in this paper. The described typology is based upon functional definitions of elementary and conceptual behavior and incorporates the kinds of goals and objectives that surveys and research have shown to be…

Describes a schema-theoretic view of how analogies enhance students' prior knowledge; reviews some of the recent studies using analogies to assist students' comprehension of science text; and illustrates the use of an analogical study guide in biology. (HOD)

Argues that new vocabulary words should be presented in concept clusters and related to prior knowledge to facilitate organization in memory. Presents a sample lesson for science vocabulary. (HOD)

To investigate the effectiveness of integrating abstract and realistic visualization, the effectiveness of four treatments was measured for: (1) facilitating student achievement of different kinds of educational objectives; (2) students possessing different levels of student ability; (3) externally paced and self-paced methods of instruction; and…