This study investigated the effects that critical literacy instruction had on comprehension in a seventh grade reading class. Numerous studies have examined critical literacy instruction in the classroom, as well as effective methods of comprehension instruction; however, few studies have combined these two lines of inquiry. Therefore, the purpose…

In order to examine metacognitive accuracy (i.e., the relationship between metacognitive judgment and memory performance), researchers often rely on by-participant analysis, where metacognitive accuracy (e.g., resolution, as measured by the gamma coefficient or signal detection measures) is computed for each participant and the computed values are…

Higher education is rapidly changing and university instructors are presented with new types of students for whom technology is a significant influence. They perceive technology as a way of life and express a need to feel connected at all times. With increasingly diverse university classroom, technology integration is both a challenge and an…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the type, pattern, and complexity of Internet reading strategies used by seven accomplished high school readers. Individual participants performed an academic Internet reading task with the goal of developing critical questions about their chosen controversial topic. Strategies for Internet reading were…

This is the first report from a new initiative called TLRI Project Plus. It aims to add value to the Teaching and Learning Research Initiative (TLRI), which NZCER manages on behalf of the government, by synthesising findings across multiple projects. This report focuses on two projects in statistics education and explores the factors that…

Purpose: This study investigated inference construction within spoken narratives in adolescents with varying cognitive and language abilities, using W. Kintsch's (1988) construction-integration model as a framework. The role of working memory in inference construction was examined along with language and nonverbal cognition. Method: Participants…

"Transitive inference" refers to the ability to judge from memory the relationships between indirectly related items that compose a hierarchically organized series, and this capacity is considered a fundamental feature of relational memory. Here we explored the role of the prefrontal cortex in transitive inference by examining the performance of…

Assessment systems that track children's progress across time need to be sensitive to the variegated nature of development. Although instruments are commonly designed to assess behaviors within a specific age range, some children advance slower or faster than others and, as a result, often show behaviors from a younger or older age group. This…

Reports that infants in the second year of life can attribute false beliefs to others have all used a "search" paradigm in which an agent with a false belief about an object's location searches for the object. The present research asked whether 18-month-olds would still demonstrate false-belief understanding when tested with a novel "non-search"…

This article provides an interpretation of a biblical text about the judge Gideon. It uses the hermeneutic method of research to draw some evaluation patterns from this case study relating to the analysis of needs, the declaration of aims, the context and circumstances of evaluation, the agents involved, the recruitment process, the assessment of…

This study examined whether infants privilege shape over other perceptual properties when making inferences about the shared properties of novel objects. Forty-six 15-month-olds were presented with novel target objects that possessed a nonobvious property, followed by test objects that varied in shape, color, or texture relative to the target.…

Large-scale test scores are the most visible representation of what happens in schools in the U.S. The prevailing notion is that they will tell people most of what they need to know about a school, including the quality of instruction and the effectiveness of the teaching and administrative staff. Americans put credence in test scores despite the…

Recently, reading researchers have come to assume that the ability to synthesize units of information across multiple texts on a topic by comparing, contrasting, synthesizing, integrating, and building a mental representation of them--referred to as multiple-documents literacy--is a far more required literacy in the present knowledge societies…

This article reports on the results of a paper-pen questionnaire study involving certain key aspects of the nature of science. The questionnaire covers, among other things, aspects such as uniqueness of the scientific method, objectivity of scientific data, and immutability of scientific laws. The survey was given out to eighty trainee teachers…

The trend toward the use of distance education in teaching social work students has been rapidly growing over the past two decades. A constant issue of concern is related to student outcomes. This paper reports on a longitudinal quasi-experimental study assessing the differential knowledge and attitude toward research between social work students…