Presented in this volume are five papers on literacy in the Australian Aboriginal context. They include: "Cultural Considerations in Vernacular Literacy Programmes for Traditionally Oriented Adult Aborigines" (Joy L. Sandefur); "Characteristics of Aboriginal Cognitive Abilities: Implications for Literacy and Research…

This study sought to determine if preservice teachers hold different preferences for college-course learning activities at four levels of professional training. Subjects of the study were 549 students, ranging from freshmen through seniors in their undergraduate teacher preparation program. The Learning Preference Questionnaire asked the students…

Computer learners often develop explanations of events they observe during training. Recent work on generalization suggests that explanations may be valuable in permitting learners to develop generalizations from one or a few examples. This study explores the idea by describing four generalization paradigms in which explanations play a part:…

A study classified and compared the learning style preferences of learning-disabled (LD) and gifted elementary school students with peers who were not identified as gifted or LD. The Learning Style Inventory (Dunn, Dunn, and Price, 1981), covering 22 learning style elements grouped under four categories (environmental, emotional, sociological, and…

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), a measure of personality type and learning style, was used at Saint Louis University in the TRAILS (Tracking Retention and Academic Integration by Learning Style) Project. In addition to considering links between learning styles and student academic achievement and aptitude, MBTI was used to identify…

People of different cultures differ in the cognitive style they use. Research reports that Mexican American children indicate a preference for field-sensitive cognitive strategies that are spatial-holistic, and middle class children a preference for field-independent strategies that are verbal-analytic. Brain research in hemisphericity appears to…

A theoretical linguistic model is insufficient to deal with the problems of language teaching because of the complexity of the phenomena concerned and the dynamic nature of language acquisition and communication. Most linguistic models neglect the fact that, in communicative situations, language users construct the prerequisites of communicative…

While individualized learning strategies typically provide large amounts of instructional support, they also reply heavily on learner judgement to determine the amount of support required to achieve an objective. Frequently, these strategies result in high achievers selecting too much support and low achievers selecting too little. Interest in…

Research involving eye movement monitoring can help in understanding the nature of the mental processes involved in reading, how these develop as one learns to read, and what processing strategies or characteristics are more common in those children who fail to show normal progress in learning to read. First, eye movement records show that the…

In this paper the theory that human thinking proceeds according to the computer model, or symbol manipulation, is reviewed and challenged. The research used as subjects five highly rated tournament chess players who "thought aloud" during a chess game to provide tape recorded protocols of decisions made while playing. These protocols…

In 1986, the National Association of Secondary School Principals, with the assistance of a national task force, published the NASSP Learning Style Profile (LSP) for diagnosis of the cognitive styles, perceptual response tendencies, and instructional preferences of middle level and senior high school students. This monograph offers a short course…

This study compared the personality, cognitive style, and descriptive preferences of 79 preservice undergraduate education students who chose independent study instead of traditional teacher-directed study. Self esteem, field articulation, locus of control, cognitive style preference, and need for achievement tests were administered and…

This paper outlines some of the issues that emerged from guiding student teachers through the experience of conducting action research. Action research was used a a way of working toward a student teaching experience that would provide opportunities and structures to facilitate and enhance the students' development as reflective teachers. Several…

Based on the idea that poor reading skills may be contributing to academic failure among Spanish-speaking high school students and on research suggesting that classification skills may help in reading, a set of lessons focusing on classification was developed for this group. The bilingual lessons use various classification tasks to teach students…

Within the last few years English curriculum, especially at the introductory levels, has changed so that reading and the study of literature is integrated with the learning of writing skills. Consequently, English teachers need to consider the best way to merge the two skills by drawing upon the findings of psychologists and cognition theorists to…