Brief, targeted self-affirmation writing exercises have recently been offered as a way to reduce racial achievement gaps, but evidence about their effects in educational settings is mixed, leaving ambiguity about the likely benefits of these strategies if implemented broadly. A key limitation in interpreting these mixed results is that they come…

A group of preservice science teachers edited video footage of their practice teaching to identify and isolate critical incidents. They then wrote guided reflection papers on those critical incidents using different forms of media prompts while they wrote. The authors used a counterbalanced research design to compare the quality of writing that…

Literature on the learning benefits and interpersonal mechanisms of peer assessment (PA) and teacher assessment (TA) has been inconsistent. As part of a large-scale study, the research reported here has addressed the effect of formative PA on language grammar uptake and complexity, accuracy, and fluency triad scale levels, in comparison both to TA…

This cross-case analysis of three distinct letter writing activities between prospective teachers (PTs) and K-12 learners provides insights into PTs' levels of feedback according to Hattie and Timperley's (2007) framework. PTs' written feedback from letter writing activities conducted in teacher preparation programs were analyzed using this…

Brief, targeted self-affirmation writing exercises have recently been offered as a way to reduce racial achievement gaps, but evidence about their effects in educational settings is mixed, leaving ambiguity about the likely benefits of these strategies if implemented broadly. A key limitation in interpreting these mixed results is that they come…

One approach to reducing persistent racial/ethnic achievement gaps is to tackle their social-psychological dimensions, including the negative consequences of stereotype threat and other identity threats in school. Initial research suggested that a particularly promising approach is brief self-affirmation writing exercises for 7th grade students;…

The purpose of this study was to explore the effects of modality on learning from multimedia instruction. This study utilized a factorial between-subject design to examine the effects of modality on student learning outcomes, study patterns and mental effort. An interactive computer-presented diagram was developed to teach the places of…

Introductory biology courses are supposed to serve as gateways for many majors, but too often they serve instead as gatekeepers. Reliance on lectures, large classes, and multiple-choice tests results in high drop and failure rates. Critiques of undergraduate science education are clear about the problems with conventional introductory science…

This study investigates the benefits of collaborative writing tasks. Previous research from the perspective of the sociocultural theory of mind suggests that writing tasks completed in pairs offer learners an opportunity to collaborate in the solution of their language-related problems, co-construct new language knowledge, and produce…

We used a randomized quasi-experimental design to test the effectiveness of three types of perspective-taking condition in a forgiveness education program. Allport's Contact Hypothesis was used as a framework for the study design. Eighth graders (n?=?132) in an urban Midwestern city were invited to participate. We evaluated the effectiveness of…

This exploratory study sheds new light on students' perceptions of online feedback types for a complex writing task, summary writing from spoken input in a foreign language (L2), and investigates how these correlate with their actual learning to write. Students tend to favour clear-cut, instructivist rather than constructivist feedback, and guided…

This qualitative study reports on what was learned from two former teacher candidates, who engaged in self-affirmation writing exercises in an education seminar during their final semester in a teacher education program. Self-affirmations, as presented here, are brief psychological interventions designed to enhance the self-integrity of teacher…

This study addresses closing the academic performance gaps between African American and Latino students and their White counterparts, and between girls and boys in mathematics. Of the various models and theories of these social inequalities that have been advanced in literature, one particularly compelling line of research concerns the idea of…

In this paper we report a case study of two first-year students at a university in Hong Kong doing the same writing assignment that required the use of sources. We explore the students' understanding of plagiarism, their strategies for composing, the similarity between their texts and source texts, and the lecturer's assessment of their work. The…

The purpose of this study was to compare scores on writing assignments from traditional, fully online courses in technical writing to pilot, hybrid courses at a southern university. A total of 232 students' assignments were compared in this study. All writing assignments were scored by six trained instructors of English using the same five point…