Intended for elementary school reading teachers, this booklet offers insight into the nature of comprehension and suggestions for enhancing children's comprehension skills. The first chapter discusses trends in comprehension research, and several specific points about the nature of comprehension and how it can best be taught. The second chapter…

Although many researchers have identified meaningful learning as the proper aim of education, the realization of that aim and the theoretical understanding of the prerequisites for meaningful learning in the school setting are far from complete. By integrating ideas from theories of meaningful learning with ideas from theories of purposeful,…

While many contemporary developmental theorists have avoided taking a stand on the controversial relationship between learning and development, this paper is based on the belief that the notion of "bandwidth of competence," or L. S. Vygotsky's "zone of proximal development," provides a useful framework for considering this…

A socio-educational model of second language learning suggests that the learning of a second language involves both an ability and a motivational component and that the major basis of this motivation is best viewed from a social psychological perspective. The motivational component is influenced to some extent by factors that affect an…

This paper focuses on aspects of a process of learning (participation) that emerged in a study of crosscultural experiences. As a phenomenological work, this study brings attention to the possibility that how adults learn in everyday life may actually be a process of experiencing the difference between what is familiar and known, and that which is…

This article explores the challenges of espousing a critical pedagogy within the managerial climate that presently shapes teacher education. Current discourses of professionalism are incommensurate with an understanding of the way that literacy practices are grounded in the social worlds in which both school and university students operate. Such…

Teaching and learning in adult education must be suited to individual characteristics of whole adult personalities (holism). The best help we can get in this today comes from programed instruction. Modern learning centers established to form networks would improve the abilities of citizens to learn independently, and facilitate continuing…

Different kinds of basic knowledge and strategies necessary for comprehension are examined in three radically different domains: (1) the stories, (2) mathematical problems, and (3) electronic circuits. From analyzing the comprehension processes in these different domains, similarities have emerged in the role of planning knowledge and the…

This paper contains a description of the status of a project on student information processing responses that mediate teaching effects in classroom settings. The central activity of the project is the construction of a conceptual model that relates classroom task structures to student information processing and to subject-matter achievement. The…

In a study of the effects of pictorial stimuli on story recall, 64 second graders were randomly assigned to two experimental groups and two control groups. The learning materials consisted of two orally presented ten-sentence stories. The experimental subjects viewed pictures while the stories were read, and the control groups followed the printed…

This paper discusses strategies for teaching college composition, emphasizing "mechanical-meaningful-communicative" (M-M-C) sequencing. Under the M-M-C sequence, a student performs the following exercises: mechanical exercises, which build success in stimulus-response learning; meaningful exercises, which provide stimuli for problem-solving tasks;…

Three examples of teacher and student exchanges in mathematics classes are presented which typify the qualitative difference between children's thinking and adult's thinking. The cases explored also illustrate differences caused by cultural factors. (JP)

The use of counting for subtraction was investigated. Counting for subtraction is related to counting-on for addition and to four skills: the ability to use the subtrahend cardinality to gain entry into the count sequence, the ability to use the minuend cardinality to gain entry into the count sequence, the ability to use the count sequence to…

Strength of four-person protocols as contrasted with the clinical interview and two-person protocols are described in the following areas: identification of odd and idiosyncratic heuristics revealed through reflexive talk; generalizable results that emerge from prolonged discussion; and opportunities to study learning in small groups. The study…