The spread of misinformation has underscored the importance of cultivating citizens' competency to critically evaluate popular accounts of scientific evidence. Extending the prevailing emphasis on evidence in the natural sciences, we argue for fostering students' understanding of psychological evidence and its communication in the media. In this…

Connection-making among multiple representations is a crucial but difficult competence in STEM learning. Prior research has focused on one type of learning process involved in connection-making: sense-making processes leading to conceptual understanding of connections. Yet, other research suggests that a second type of learning process is…

We investigated the impact of dialogue and deep-level-reasoning questions on vicarious learning in 2 studies with undergraduates. In Experiment 1, participants learned material by interacting with AutoTutor or by viewing 1 of 4 vicarious learning conditions: a noninteractive recorded version of the AutoTutor dialogues, a dialogue with a…

Analyzed a corpus of videotapes in which university students solved physics problems to determine how students learn to understand a physics equation. Found that students learn to understand physics equations in terms of a vocabulary of elements called symbolic forms, each associating a simple conceptual schema with a pattern of symbols. Findings…

Presents ongoing research for constructing formal models of learning in rich problem-solving domains. The underlying framework for the research is aimed at integrating models of active, goal-oriented learning processes with theories of problem-solving and cognitive skill development. Indicates that the particular self-explanation and…