This paper presents an overview of recent psychological research relevant to the assessment and instruction of culturally and linguistically different students. First, general research by cross-cultural psychologists is described, focusing on the observation that types of thinking and learning behavior are influenced by social organization and…

Studies of age differences in second language learning ability are collected along with commentary on the results. The 12 papers describe long and short term studies of children and adults that focus on the optimal age for second language acquisition, the effect of different teaching methods and environments on age differences, and theories that…

A study of learner modality in second language learning conducted at a small, private liberal arts university had as subjects 20 freshmen in a second-semester Spanish course. The students' modality strength (visual, auditory, kinesthetic, or mixed) was correlated with Scholastic Aptitude Test measures, grades, and gender. The findings support…

This article derives from a research project investigating the singing behaviour of a group of Australian boys in their first year of school. The project showed that the genesis of the "missing male" trend in singing at school may be occurring in early childhood. The impact of hegemonic masculinity in early childhood is explored here by…

This paper argues for an interdisciplinary approach to beliefs about language learning research, and suggests that current studies in this area do not go far enough to examine the extent to which stable factors, such as individual learner differences, account for the nature of beliefs. Next, it elucidates how cognitive and personality psychology…

Courses using a Personalized System of Instruction (PSI) have proliferated in the past decade. Researchers have explored various factors related to PSI, but rarely, if ever, have students' study habits or preferences been considered. A questionnaire examining the study habits, exam preferences and attitudes toward various instructional formats was…

Modification of mother-child instructional interaction was examined in relation to specific tasks and the age of the child. Thirty-two mothers taught their 6- or 8-year-old children one of two laboratory classification tasks resembling a home or a school activity. The home task involved putting grocery items on shelves in a mock kitchen, and the…

Mathematics education research from fourteen studies is abstracted and critiqued in this publication. Six cover aspects of instructional practice, four deal with points in learning theory, two with problem solving, and one each with calculators and sex differences. Research in mathematics education as reported in CIJE and RIE from October to…

Twelve research reports related to mathematics education are abstracted and analyzed. Three of the reports deal with aspects of learning theory, two with student characteristics, and one each with calculators, problem solving, secondary mathematics curriculum changes in Australia, sex differences, teaching methods, and tutoring strategies. The…

The various methods of adaptive instruction can provide college faculty with options for tailoring educational experiences according to the learning situation. In conventional, lecture-type instruction, the pace and difficulty level is the same for all students, allowing for no individualization. By encouraging the students to take responsibility…

This study was designed to assess the effectiveness of a group-based, teacher-paced model of mastery learning for instruction in undergraduate education courses. It was hypothesized that the mastery-taught students, who were provided formative tests and corrective activities, would achieve higher scores on the final examination and higher grades…

Presented are examples of student differences in thought forms derived from interviews of students entering the natural science line and technology line of the integrated upper secondary schools in Sweden. Methods are outlined for the symbolic description, analysis and interpretation of "thought forms," and ways are described in which dialogue…

The different learning abilities of senior citizens and ways that older students can successfully maximize their learning effort in a class essentially designed for younger learners are discussed. Because of a regressed transformational drill behavior, the pedagogical hypothesis and the teaching strategy must de-emphasize a consistent audiolingual…

The purpose of the investigation was to develop and test an audio-tutorial program for a course in Basic Reference. The design of the investigation was a posttest-only-control group design with 63 students randomly assigned to either an audio-tutorial or a lecture group. Data were collected and analyzed using a t-test for two groups and four…

A study of 130 undergraduate students enrolled in a course on auiovisual techniques sought to determine whether heuristic or algorithmic computer-based problem solving training would be differentially effective for students varying in cognitive complexity as measured by the Educational Set Scale (ESS). The interaction was investigated between one…