This paper contributes to understanding why curriculum design in a discipline with a horizontal knowledge structure is difficult, time-consuming and contested. A previous paper on the same case study in one sociology department reported that students who had completed the general sociology major found it lacking in coherence. To illustrate the…

Immigrant-origin adolescents represent the fastest growing segment of youth population in the United States, and in many urban schools they represent the majority of students. In this 3-wave longitudinal study, we explored trajectories of internalizing mental health symptoms (depression, anxiety, and somatic symptoms). The participants included…

Previous research has revealed that we create and maintain mental representations for perceived objects on the basis of their spatiotemporal continuity. An important question is what type of information can be maintained within these so-called object files. We provide evidence that object files retain specific attentional control settings for…

Andrew Elby (this issue) argues that researchers in the field of personal epistemology should beware insistence on a narrow definition of epistemology to guide this work. His argument is a response to suggestions (Hofer & Pintrich, 1997; Sandoval, 2005) that the study of personal epistemology should focus on people's views about knowledge and…

The changes of learning environments and the advancement of learning theories have increasingly demanded for feedback that can describe learning progress trajectories. Effective assessment should be able to evaluate how learners acquire knowledge and develop problem solving skills. Additionally, it should identify what issues these learners have…

In this study, we investigated whether concept maps were used as often and as effectively in elementary science and technology classrooms as recommended by the National Ministry of Education (MEB) in the new curricula in Turkey. In the new elementary science and technology curricula, the MEB provides a general concept map for each unit. We used…

Introduction: The study seeks to answer two questions: How do university students learn to use correct strategies to conduct scholarly information searches without instructions? and, What are the differences in learning mechanisms between users at different cognitive levels? Method: Two groups of users, thirteen first year undergraduate students…

Problem solving skills and abilities are critical in life and more specifically in the engineering field. Unfortunately, significant numbers of South African students who are accessing higher education lack problem solving skills and this results in poor academic performance jeopardizing their progress especially from first to second year. On the…

The expansion of higher education in the UK has been accompanied by ongoing class related inequalities in expectations about, and access to, university. In the context of detailed research into middle-class and working-class experiences and difference, there have been calls for more detailed analysis of internal class diversity, and for…

This study aims to enhance understanding of the factors underlying variance in the reading comprehension skills of prelingually deaf individuals. Participants were 213 sixth through tenth graders with prelingual deafness recruited from four orthographic backgrounds (Hebrew, Arabic, English, and German) and allocated to three distinct reading…

The authors examine conceptual change in preservice teachers through a synthesis and application of mental models theory. They analyzed longitudinal data in the form of lesson plans, interviews, and written rationales from eight, social science preservice teachers. Findings that illustrate how preservice teachers' mental models changed during…

Continuity of functions appears throughout the grades in South African high school (FET (further education and training)) topics as prescribed by the final draft of the Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement. This article reports on the use of a combined framework of APOS (action-process-object-schema) and DCT (dual coding theories) to analyze…

The Scottish Credit and Qualifications Framework (SCQF) was formally launched in 2001. It is a comprehensive credit-based National Qualifications Framework (NQF) with twelve levels, intended to accommodate all qualifications and assessed learning in Scotland. It aims to support access to learning and to make the education and training system more…

It is widely documented that the density property of rational numbers is challenging for students. The framework theory approach to conceptual change places this observation in the more general frame of problems faced by learners in the transition from natural to rational numbers. As students enrich, but do not restructure, their natural number…

This study compared the effects of a constructivist-visual mind map teaching approach (CMA) and of a traditional teaching approach (TTA) on (a) the quality and richness of students' knowledge structures and (b) TTA and CMA students' perceptions of the extent that a constructivist learning environment (CLE) was created in their classes. The sample…