The use of effective instructional strategies is clearly emphasized in current educational reform, especially in the area of reading. The purposes of this study were to investigate the rates at which specific instructional practices (i.e., attention signals, prior knowledge supports, previews, instructor modeling, student modeling, organizational…

Four classes of ninth-grade students in an international school in East Asia used a set of web-based technology tools to evaluate two competing webpages about the Taiwan Straits. The findings highlight the ways these students developed disciplinary literacy in social studies by drawing upon cultural resources and contextual knowledge as they…

Animal species identification is often emphasized as a basic prerequisite for an understanding of ecology because ecological interactions are based on interactions between species at least as it is taught on the school level. Therefore, training identification skills or using identification books seems a worthwhile task in biology education, and…

Suggests that seeing is much more than a passive intake of images by the brain. It involves great mental activity and is dependent upon prior experiences. Cites a variety of authors from a variety of disciplines who have written about seeing. Contains 19 references. (DDR)

This article describes an action research project in which the members of a basic English class for adults over 50 at a Colombian public university undertook the mission of discovering their potentialities as autonomous learners. By means of the reflective use of the language portfolio, the members of this course guided the planning and execution…

This article aims at identifying the kind of American and British literature tests that can be designed to allow students who enter a bilingual education program at a private university in Colombia to have their previous knowledge in these two subjects accredited through a proficiency test. Students' needs, opinions, beliefs, existing commercial…

Over the past several decades, colleges and universities have moved away from the traditional chalk-and-talk lecture. Professors have experimented with a myriad of methods to engage students more fully. Some of the innovations that have been used have succeeded in improving student performance and satisfaction. In this paper we report the learning…

This study was inspired by a history of student difficulties in calculus, and innovation in response to those difficulties. The goals of the study were fourfold. First, to design a mathlet for students to explore local linearity. Second, to redesign the curriculum of first semester calculus around the use of technology, an emphasis on…

The European Students' Union (ESU) has been writing about the student perspective on the Bologna Process since it get formally involved in it. Four editions of the students' independent stocktaking report "Bologna With Student Eyes" between 2003 and 2009 shed light on the perception of those stakeholders, which are probably mostly…

Immersion programmes in primary schools have gained more and more recognition over the last decades. Every new immersion school faces the problem of providing a concept which will be put into practise with the help of personnel who have normally not been trained specifically for this task. The purpose of this guide is to answer frequently asked…

Even at the dawn of the 21st century, the sexual education of children in America is controlled by attitudes and myths about sexual learning that, in reality, date back hundreds of years. And despite the strong, vibrant, and progressive traditions, many independent schools also remain well behind the curve on this vital aspect of children's lives.…

This article examines how students enrolled in a university course focused on sociocultural influences and learning changed in their understanding of the relationship between sociocultural factors, teaching, and schooling over the duration of the semester. In this context, sociocultural factors refer to key social constructs such as race, class,…

The aim of this article is to investigate with high and low knowledge subjects in the scientific domain of the neuron, the way information should be presented and illustrated to promote the integration of new information. This fundamental process for learning was examined in two experiments using a primed recognition task. In the first study, the…

Previous research has shown that encouraging learners to explain material to themselves as they study can increase their understanding. Furthermore, different types of material (e.g. text or diagrams) influence learners' self-explanation behaviour. This study explores whether the coherence of text impacts upon the self-explanation effect.…

Students bring prior knowledge to their learning experiences. This prior knowledge is known to affect how students encode and later retrieve new information learned. Teachers and content developers can use information about students' prior knowledge to create more effective lessons and materials. In many content areas, particularly the sciences,…