Students struggling with reading in secondary school are between "learning to read" and "reading to learn." Struggling readers require metacognitive and cognitive reading skills to tackle the complexities of reading. Combining the research of worked-examples and think-aloud shaped the instructional intervention in this study.…

This dissertation explores seven second language (L2) undergraduates' learning experiences in a First-Year Writing (FYW) course at an American university. While the FYW course is designed from the perspective of first-language (L1) composition scholarship and focuses, broadly speaking, on analytical writing and the related development of critical…

Elementary school students often exhibit a wide variety of different conceptions associated with algebraic thinking that their teachers fail to recognize or understand (Smith, diSessa, & Roschelle, 1994). It is crucial that elementary school teachers possess knowledge of the variety of different student conceptions and also boast abilities to…

This study investigated the effects that critical literacy instruction had on comprehension in a seventh grade reading class. Numerous studies have examined critical literacy instruction in the classroom, as well as effective methods of comprehension instruction; however, few studies have combined these two lines of inquiry. Therefore, the purpose…

This study explored the effects of alternative forms of argumentation on undergraduates' physics solutions in introductory calculus-based physics. A two-phase concurrent mixed methods design was employed to investigate relationships between undergraduates' written argumentation abilities, conceptual quality of problem solutions, as well…

The present study explored how seventh graders develop their understanding of climate change issues. Particularly, I focused on identifying students' ways of reasoning in evaluating and generating arguments. I also investigated whether students reason differently about climate change issues depending on the relevance of the issues to their daily…

The optimal development of expertise is dependent on the application of a regimen of deliberate practice. A component of this practice is the development of critical thinking skills related to the solving of complex problems in ill-structured, naturalistic environments. The cognitive steps used to solve problems by experts is frequently not…

The purpose of this exploratory qualitative study was to determine the reasoning processes used by paramedics to solve clinical problems. Existing research documents concern over the accuracy of paramedics' clinical decision-making, but no research was found that examines the cognitive processes by which paramedics make either faulty or accurate…

Although much is known about how students perform on standardized tests, little research exists concerning how students think and process while taking such tests. This mixed methods action research study was designed to investigate if a constructivist approach to test preparation could yield improved results for 37 English language arts freshmen…