Proposes that an important role for connectionist research in language acquisition is analyzing what linguistic information is present in the child's input. Recent connectionist and statistical work analyzing the properties of real language corpora suggest a priori objections against the utility of distributional information are misguided. This…

Outlines current trends in education and considers their impact on the future of education, particularly distance education. Highlights include the pressure to use technology; standardized competencies; outcomes and assessments; teacher's role; learner-centered philosophies; constructivism; field-based and informal learning; automating…

Discusses the World Wide Web as a transformative medium and considers future possibilities. Highlights include ideas that 15-year-olds had for future working and learning environments; how youth learn having grown up in a digital environments; lifelong learning; multitasking; new ideas of literacy relating to information and navigation; sharing…

A reading-specific multiple classification task was designed that required children to classify printed words along phonological and semantic dimensions simultaneously. Reading-specific multiple classification skill made a unique contribution to children's reading comprehension over contributions made by age, domain-general multiple classification…

Observes that the major challenge teachers confront is resisting the urge to be a "know-it-all," to dispense facile answers, to stop the inquiry. Concludes that only after surmounting the fear of being without an answer and after a conscious decision is made to listen thoughtfully can real learning begin. (SD)

Reviews studies examining the effects of theoretically-based Logo environments on young children's metacognitive processing and the extent to which sociocognitive processes mediate those effects. Findings suggest that Logo fosters development of metacognitive processing, in part by engendering high-level conflict resolution. Implications are…

Describes the use of PowerPoint software in a cooperative setting that allows inclusion students to create presentations as part of the learning process. Discusses equipment needed, audience, teacher and student preparation, and student evaluation, and includes examples of storyboards and worksheets. (Author/LRW)

Describes the Kanak culture in New Caledonia, a French colony located in the South Pacific. Explores the educational system in New Caledonia and the role Kanak culture, or la coutume, plays in schools. Examines the implications of didactic and customary learning and customary influences in school that affect Kanak students, learning, and culture.…

Describes a class at St. Petersburg Junior College (Florida) that blends classroom, computer lab, and Web-based resources for an English as Second language class. Discusses paradigm shifts in learning processes and teaching methods; designing student activities for the course; and student attitudes. (LRW)

Negotiation skills are valuable tools especially in the international business context. However, the extent to which negotiation simulations build new skills rather than augment existing skills is unclear. This empirical study focuses on the extent to which Mexican students and U.S. students learned from a negotiation simulation. The results…

Recent findings [Turcotte, Gagnon, & Poirier, 2005. The effect of old age on the learning of supra-span sequences. "Psychology and Aging," 20, 251-260.] indicate that incidental learning of visuo-spatial supra-span sequences through immediate serial recall declines with old age (Hebb's paradigm). In this study, we examined whether…

This preliminary study employed mixed methodologies to explore students' use of mobile computing devices and its effects on their motivation to learn, engagement in learning activities, and support for learning processes. Data collected from students in four elementary and two seventh grade science classes in Northeast Ohio included usage logs,…

This study assessed, and identified factors in participants' learning ecologies that mediated, the effectiveness of an explicit reflective instructional approach that satisfied conditions for learning as conceptual change on preservice elementary teachers' views of nature of science (NOS). Participants were 28 undergraduate students enrolled in an…

In this study we investigate how prior knowledge influences knowledge development during collaborative discovery learning. Fifteen dyads of students (pre-university education, 15-16 years old) worked on a discovery learning task in the physics field of kinematics. The (face-to-face) communication between students was recorded and the interaction…

Student self-beliefs can impact their attention and learning processes and have been considered in instructional design theories and models. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between self-beliefs and mathematics achievement of adolescent students in Japan. Students included in these analyses were from the Third…