Despite a lack of empirical evidence, learning styles theory (LST) enjoys widespread support in education, leading many researchers to refer to it as a "myth." Although previous research has demonstrated LST's popularity, the impact of exposure to LST on teachers is not yet known. Here original survey data of K-12 teachers (n = 240) was…

How do children learn to communicate, and what do they learn? Traditionally, most theories have taken an associative, compositional approach to these questions, supposing children acquire an inventory of form-meaning associations, and procedures for composing / decomposing them; into / from messages in production and comprehension. This paper…

This article develops a framework for this special issue of "JTE," and assesses the assessment of transformative learning. What and whom are the contributors assessing? For what ends? And how effectively? The call for manuscripts cited two "megatrends" in the transformative learning literature: (1) the importance of deep and…

Despite decades of research related to teaching and learning, the findings have made little impact on classroom teaching and learning. This paper briefly describes the four existing methods to close this gap, with more extensive analyses of the limitations of one of the four methods, which is to consolidate and distill robust laboratory findings…

The role of the school principal continues to increase in its responsibility and complexity. This narrative study centered around two research questions: 1. What stories do principals tell about their memorable professional development and 2. In what ways do the stories align with Knowles' principles of adult learning theory? Eight principals from…

This dissertation presents three studies on learning in children museums. The first study is a literature review of the research that was done on learning in children's museums between 2010 and 2021. In this review, I focused on presenting a current state of the field with insights into what research has been done and where there may be gaps in…

The problem addressed by this study was the commonly held belief that lack of confidence, preparedness, educational neuromyths, and little or no professional development are factors that impede early childhood teachers' implementation of brain-based learning strategies in the daily curriculum design structure. This qualitative narrative inquiry…

The goal in this quantitative, comparative study was to examine differences in students' achievement depending on type of pedagogy--productive failure (PF) versus NPF--and gender (female vs. male) in the final content unit of an undergraduate general education mathematics course taught at a university in the Southwest U.S. The study was based on…

Despite a lack of empirical evidence to support its existence, previous literature has demonstrated that Learning Styles Theory (LST) enjoys widespread popularity in education, leading many researchers to refer to it as a "myth". This study utilized original survey data to determine Kansas K-12 teachers' level of predilection for LST.…

This dissertation is composed of projects on three aspects of gathering and learning from data in the social sciences: drawing representative samples, taking valid measurement, and making warranted inductive inferences. Chapter one studies the challenge of drawing representative human samples. It is well documented that most samples used by…

This case study explored Spanish-speaking educators' perceptions and experiences of dual-language immersion (DLI) professional learning (PL). The study aimed to understand how PL offerings could best support and meet the needs of DLI Spanish teachers' best practices in the target language. The perceptions and experiences of seven Spanish DLI…

This preliminary case study used qualitative methods to analyze the experiences of eight short-term education abroad participants prior to, during, and shortly after a two-week program in Taipei. Interpretive analysis of reflection papers, focus group interviews, mobile app assignments, and a post-program evaluation survey revealed that students…

Most students in higher education at present are 'digital natives.' They use technology in every facet of their life, including their education. They learn from formally organised courses as well as from informal learning. Hence, informal learning has been identified as crucial for the sustainability of higher education in the current global…

This design case centers around a creative assignment given to graduate students studying instructional design. The goal of the assignment is to facilitate mastery of learning theories through the theory-based evaluation of an instructional product, using both research and imagination. By applying learning theories in a practical and engaging…

The Topic Hypothesis posits that Chinese language learners progress through a developmental sequence comprising five stages (Gao, 2009; Wang, 2011), which includes the Object-Subject-Verb (OSV) structure at stage 4 and the ba-construct at stage 5. According to this hypothesis, learners typically master the OSV structure before acquiring the…