The central place of the learning environment and the personal characteristics of the learner in influencing whether students adopt deep or surface approaches to learning is well evidenced in the literature (for example, Marton & Saljo, 1976; Biggs, 1987; Entwhistle, 2001; Ramsden, 2003). For this reason, tertiary educators are constantly…

As a number of recent studies suggest applications of networked computers in education have very inconsistent results ranging from success stories to complete failures. Literally, thousands of e-learning projects have been carried out that greatly differ in their outcomes. Until now, however, there is no systematic or a standardized way of…

Background: Students in higher education are known to vary in their conceptions of learning, their approaches to studying, and the personal development and personal change that result. Aims: This study aimed to explore the relationships among these four aspects of students' experience; to examine whether there were variations across academic…

The author examined the impact of environmental education lessons in a study that compared activities conducted in the schoolyard with traditional classroom activities involving elementary school boys and girls. Participants were 109 4th- and 5th-grade students. Researchers conducted a 2 (group: traditional/treatment) X 2 (gender) multivariate…

This mixed methods study explored the dynamics of interaction within a self-paced online learning environment. It used rich media and a mix of traditional and emerging asynchronous computer-mediated communication tools to determine what forms of interaction learners in a self-paced online course value most and what impact they perceive interaction…

The purpose of this study was to investigate medical students' information commitments toward online web medical information. The sample consisted of 534 volunteer medical university students with internet experience from 6 medical universities in Taiwan. This study used the Information Commitment Survey (ICS) for an investigation of medical…

The purpose of this study was to examine whether matching navigation mode of a learning environment with learners' preferred navigation mode would facilitate their learning in a web environment. Sixty-eight undergraduate students were randomly assigned to treatments (linear vs. nonlinear navigation mode) and received four criterion tests designed…

Despite the rigorous and robust evaluation of learning styles theories, models and inventories, little objective evidence in support of their effectiveness has been found. The lack of unambiguous evidence in support of these models and practices leaves the continued popularity of these models and instruments as a puzzle. Two related accounts of…

The authors' goal in this paper is to initiate a dialogue among educators who continue to make assertions about the usefulness of identifying students' learning styles with little or no research support. They discuss the status of learning style instruction and the unsubstantiated claims made by authors of learning style instruments and by…

This paper looks at the paradox of how recognition of diversity through research into individual differences, in such areas as learning style, cognitive style and personality, has had the reductionist effect of promoting commonality. This has been the outcome of the competition between inventories; the reduction of diversity to characteristics…

Unlike the literature on some dispositions, like field dependence-independence, in psychology, the dispositions cited in the teacher education literature (e.g., INTASC) have almost no explanatory value and very little meaning at the present time. This conclusion stems from an analysis of the cited teacher dispositions in terms of Underwood's…

This study examines the psychometrics of the perceptual component of the Style Analysis Survey (SAS) [Oxford, R.L., 1993a. "Style Analysis Survey (SAS)." University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL]. The study is conducted in the context of questions over another perceptual learning-styles instrument, the "Perceptual Learning Styles Preferences…

Student teaching is the culminating experience of most teacher preparation programs. Student teaching gives the prospective teacher the opportunity to join the worlds of theory and practice and to develop individual teaching talents. Long hours are regularly spent in several areas. This study sought to investigate how student teachers distribute…

The authors investigated cognitive processing styles associated with interests in scientist and practitioner activities among a sample of undergraduate psychology majors who planned to attend graduate school. Results indicated that interests in scientist activities were associated with a greater motivation to engage in effortful processing (i.e.,…

A test of the predicted interaction between within-category discontinuity and verbal rule complexity on information-integration and rule-based category learning was conducted. Within-category discontinuity adversely affected information-integration category learning but not rule-based category learning. Model-based analyses suggested that some…