Reviews and discusses critically the development during the last decade of the cognitive approach to information retrieval research and theory. The focus is analytic and empirical research on the complex nature of information need formation and situation, their inherent association with the concept of relevance, and the development of cognitive…

Around 5 or 6 years of age, children begin to recognize that speakers who make ironic remarks do not believe what they literally say, but children of the same age do not show appreciation for the humor function of irony (Dews et al., 1996; Harris & Pexman, 2003). We investigated 7- to 10-year-old children's interpretations of verbal irony and…

This paper reports the results of a small-scale (n = 9) interview study of the "ways of knowing" of academics in a Design School at a South African polytechnic. The focus of the study was on exploring the perceptions of these academics about discipline-specific knowledge in their fields. The paper presents an analysis of the responses,…

This paper backgrounds and illustrates an approach to researching didactic knowledge. Underlying the approach are some of the frameworks developed from the student learning research. Based on these frameworks the experience of learning about a particular phenomenon is theorised as having educationally critical aspects. Without addressing these…

Law often appears to be in a limbo between the Social Sciences and the Humanities. Movements within legal scholarship itself, the law and economics movement and the law and literature movement, represent efforts to portray law as a social science or as a humanity. But if one looks at what lawyers do, one finds that law is more like…

Developmental psychologists have been interested in the cognitive ability of perspective-taking for a number of years due to the apparent link between perspective-taking deficits and Autistic Spectrum Disorder. Most of the research in this area has employed the concepts and techniques of the approach commonly referred to as "Theory of Mind." The…

The purpose of this descriptive study was to explore whether there is a relationship between the age at which music lessons begin and language reading proficiency as an adult. Such a relationship may indicate that transfer of learning takes place between the processes of learning to read language and learning to read music. One hundred forty-seven…

The study was designed to explore qualitatively developmental differences in disagreement negotiation and resolution skills between adolescent and young adult romantic partners. Twenty adolescent and 20 young adult couples participated in the study. The Knox inventory was used to measure the level of disagreement between partners on ten domains…

We examined the wildlife knowledge of primary (aged 4-12) schoolchildren. In particular, we examined the effects of children's age and gender, as well as the taxonomy and origin (indigenous versus exotic) of wildlife, on the degree of knowledge about different species. We used illustrated "flashcards" of mammals, birds and arthropods,…

This monograph examines and discusses the context for diversity leadership roles and practices in higher education by using research and theoretical and applied literatures from a variety of fields, including the social sciences, business, and higher education. Framing the discussion on leadership in this monograph is the perspective that American…

The purpose of this study was to assess structural knowledge change across a two-week workshop designed to provide high-school teachers with training in Java and Object Oriented Programming. Both before and after the workshop, teachers assigned relatedness ratings to pairs of key concepts regarding Java and Object Oriented Programming. Their…

As part of course requirements twenty-eight preservice teachers in a field-based content reading course created a series of self-portraits that illustrated their concerns and perceptions about teaching content reading. They accompanied their drawings with dialogue. Analysis of the portraits indicates that arts-based techniques have the potential…

The aim of this study was three-fold: (1) to determine 6th, 8th and 10th grade students' environmental knowledge and attitudes in Turkey; (2) to investigate the effect of the grade level and gender on students' environmental knowledge and attitudes; (3) to explore how environmentally responsible behaviour is related to environmental knowledge,…

This paper examines the creation of new knowledge bases in higher education in light of the ideas of Alvin Toffler, whose trilogy "Future Shock" (1970), "The Third Wave" (1980), and "Powershift" (1990) focus on the processes, directions, and control of change, respectively. It discusses the increasingly important role…

This paper describes how visual media technologies have been used to support research into the way technical diagrams are represented in people's minds. Two groups of subjects participated in this research, individuals with either a high or a low level of expertise in meteorology, specifically professional meteorologists and non-meteorologists.…