Based on an engagement perspective of reading development, we investigated the extent to which an instructional framework of combining motivation support and strategy instruction (Concept-Oriented Reading Instruction--CORI) influenced reading outcomes for third-grade children. In CORI, five motivational practices were integrated with six cognitive…

The study examines the effectiveness of visually enhanced instruction that emphasizes molecular representations. Instructional conditions were specified in terms of the visual elaboration level (static and dynamic) and the presentation mode (whole class and individual). Fifty-two eighth graders (age range 14-15 years) participated in one of the…

This article describes a study into the role of heuristic support in facilitating discovery learning through simulation-based learning. The study compares the use of two such learning environments in the physics domain of collisions. In one learning environment (implicit heuristics) heuristics are only used to provide the learner with guidance…

This paper uses phenomenography to identify undergraduates' conceptions of teaching, learning and geography and examine whether there are any differences between students in Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States. The paper shows that there are several distinct conceptions of teaching, learning and geography. Teaching is…

An experiment is conducted comparing two sections of general chemistry to evaluate the effectiveness of peer-led guided inquiry (PLGI) methods in terms of assisting student understanding in college-level general chemistry course. The pedagogical focus of PLGI is on student-student interactions within small groups, with a peer leader acting as a…

This study investigated how graduates of an urban alternative school understood, interpreted, and compared their experiences in previous schools that they considered ineffective with their experiences at an effective alternative school. This study found that students find those schools effective that create or allow spaces where they can be…

The purpose of the study is to share reflections from 140 non-Hispanic undergraduate students and 83 Hispanic students who have participated in cooperative written examinations for group grades. Reflections are clustered by themes identified from the students' comments using Van Manen's (1990) hermeneutic phenomonological approach, which is how…

This article compares ordinary conversational topics and targeted second language (L2) forms for their effectiveness in building and maintaining classroom discourse cohesion. In this study, 16 learners participated in 2 lessons, 1 with teacher turns determined by a grammatical object of instruction, and the other with turns determined by…

The emphasis placed upon interactive teaching in recent years has stimulated considerable debate about its nature. This article attempts to explore some features of teacher/pupil interaction occurring in classrooms in two countries and compares teacher/pupil interaction in mathematics lessons in St Petersburg, Russia with those in the North-East…

Chinese students often outperform U.S. students on international tests in mathematics. Chinese students' mathematics performances are assumed to be related directly to their teachers' deep mathematics understanding and ability to represent concepts flexibly in their classrooms, which, in turn, are thought to be influenced by Chinese mathematics…

In the last few years, schools and universities have incorporated personal digital assistants (PDAs) into their teaching curricula in an attempt to enhance students' learning experience and reduce instructors' workload. One of the most common uses of PDAs in the classroom is as a test administrator. This study compared the usability effectiveness,…

In this article, the author discusses the similarities and differences among educational psychology textbooks. Similarities among textbooks are: (1) general topics covered; (2) organizational scheme; and (3) visual appeal. Differences among textbooks are: (1) specific content; (2) writing style; (3) pedagogy; (4) design; and (5) ancillary package.…

Differential effects of three training procedures to teach sight words to 13 children with moderate to mild mental retardation were investigated in an alternating treatments design. Number of correct responses was assessed during probe sessions in word-alone (word was presented without picture), integrated-picture (word was presented with…

Most of the research on case-based science teaching at the university level involves comparative studies, which contrast student perceptions of case-based science teaching with more traditional teaching. Sometimes this type of research is being done to convince colleagues that case-based science teaching is equally effective if not better than…

Conceptual change researchers have made significant progress on two prominent but competing theoretical perspectives regarding knowledge structure coherence. These perspectives can be broadly characterized as (1) knowledge-as-theory perspectives and (2) knowledge-as-elements perspectives. These perspectives can be briefly summarized in terms of…