One teacher's experience with changes in writing skills and attitudes while teaching writing led to studies of the experiences of three female graduate student writing tutors with widely varying backgrounds working in a university tutorial service. One was a student from a blue collar family who had entered college as a mature student; one had…

This paper reviews several studies on aptitude treatment interaction, the interaction between the learners' individual differences and methods of instruction. Specifically, it investigates the relationship between previous knowledge, including previously held misconceptions, and instructional methods. It is suggested that significant interactions…

Temporal orientation may be defined as a central aspect of identity that pertains to the individual's unique interpretation of the life course. As a component of identity, temporal orientation should be affected by social contextual variables. Temporal orientation was assessed in a random sample of 94 men and women aged 24-61 years. Respondents…

When patients do not possess the same background knowledge, or schemata, as the Western medical practitioner, they are unable to understand fully what is communicated because they do not have the necessary conceptual framework for integrating the information presented. A study demonstrated how the absence of shared concepts between doctor and…

This paper discusses the relationship between individual differences and educational practices by reviewing the historical models of teaching and past research on learner characteristics. The mental testing movement is reviewed in terms of the emergence of aptitude as a measurable concept. Learner motivation is also discussed along with the…

The relationship between the perceptual type of adult learners--i.e., visual or haptic--and their performance upon a visual discrimination task was studied to determine if the use of multi-image representations could improve the performance of adults of different perceptual types upon selected visual tasks. Subjects were 135 volunteers from…

Five elements of teaching style which are directly related to effective learning patterns are identified: (1) warmth--monitoring seatwork, communicating awareness of behavior, providing individual assistance; (2) cognitive organization--feedback, fast-paced activities, variety of learning drills; (3) orderliness--rules, smooth transitions,…

The dimensions of the broad social-cognitive and metacognitive matrix within which pure cognitions reside are examined. Tangible cognitive actions are the cross products of beliefs held about a task, the social environment within which the task takes place, and the problem solvers' perceptions of self and their relation to the task and…

High school media program services, resources required for program establishment, and program impact on student skills and attitudes were examined in 15 Calgary senior high schools with emphasis on the effect of the audiovisual (AV) component. A student questionnaire was used with two 12th grade classes in each school to determine attitudes or…

The arts and the cultivation of informed awareness should play a more central role in classroom life than they do, and student teachers should be empowered to make this, to some degree, possible. Student teachers have to be able to spend time thinking through what a rational explanation actually means, even as they have to understand what…

Information on the process of decision-making, hints on how to function in team decision-making, and materials on how to prepare clients for decision-making in team meetings for the beginning level child welfare worker are provided in this self-instructional manual. Techniques are discussed for improving the quality of decisions made by the…

This paper reports on a replication of a 1983 study investigating whether the Renzulli/Smith Learning Style Inventory (RSLSI) can identify the learning style differences of college undergraduates. The 65 item RSLSI assesses children's preferred learning styles in nine areas: projects, simulations, drill and recitation, peer teaching, discussion,…

Learning style based education (LSBE) is an instructional approach which forms the basis for a new teaching technique, learning style informed instruction (LSII). LSBE is a special form of individualized instruction in which the instructional decisions teachers make about specific students are heavily influenced by knowledge of the characteristic…

First-year higher education students' approaches to learning navigation were assessed. The research used a structured questionnaire to assess deep, surface, and strategic approaches to learning. Principal Components Analysis (PCA) of 13 sub-scales revealed that students learning navigation employed two main approaches, a deep-strategic approach…

A series of studies carried out in Aberdeen, Scotland and Lancaster England is used to illustrate changing interests in the area of personality and learning. The early studies looked for general relationships, adopting a psychometric approach. Recent work has been focused more on the process of learning, particularly in higher education, and on…