Identifies and describes students' variation-type thinking observed in a small sample of middle-school students as they conducted a statistical investigation. (KHR)

Provides a theoretical overview of self-regulated learning, considering prospects of developing self-regulation within novice learners. The paper discusses students' self-regulation as a way to compensate for their individual differences in learning, defining the essential qualities of academic self-regulation, describing the structure and…

Explores self-regulated learning (SRL) theory in light of the reform vision of mathematics education depicted with "Principles and Standards for School Mathematics," asserting that implementation of mathematics reform makes possible the development of self-regulated learners while also necessitating developing self-regulated learners.…

Suggests that strategy choice is a misleading characterization of efficient mental calculation and that teaching mental calculation methods as a whole is not conducive to flexibility. Proposes an alternative in which calculation is thought of as an interaction between noticing and knowledge. Presents an associated teaching approach to promote…

Describes perspective and imagery thinking strategies taught during Guided Reading lessons. Notes that these strategies enhance comprehension by giving students techniques for manipulating meaning. Considers how social and physical perspective thinking strategies allow students to identify and apply a variety of perspectives, while imagery…

Describes "lesson study," a Japanese professional development process for teachers that focuses on a systematic examination of their teaching practices. Includes a brief overview of the lesson-study process, advice for setting up lesson study, and strategies for working on study lessons. (PKP)

Discusses instructional development for human resource development and performance improvement programs that optimize business results. Identifies and defines five key variables: instructional approach, learner role, learning objective, intended outcome, and expected behavior; that can inform the most relevant instructional methods to create a…

Describes a study of computer conferencing where learners interacted over the course of four log-in sessions to acquire the knowledge sufficient to pass a learning test. Studied the number of messages irrelevant to the topic, explicit threading of messages, reading times of relevant messages, and learning outcomes. (LRW)

Analysis of speech data from three adult elementary Spanish students, focusing on the acquisition of noun-phrase agreement and the copulas "ser" and "estar," revealed that learners could be classified as either form based or meaning based in terms of their strategic orientation to acquisition of the target language. (CB)

"The School Administrator" interviewed three experts concerning the status of the critical thinking movement. Robert Schwartz advocates student learning in a problem-solving context. E.D. Hirsch sees no conflict between critical thinking and cultural literacy concepts. Matthew Lipman promotes critical thinking by encouraging children to…

Discusses the importance of error as a mode of learning in the classroom. Argues that when children are not afraid of making errors, they are more likely than otherwise to take cognitive risks and raise provocative questions. (RJC)

The effects of interest on the allocation of attention to, and the learning of, written material were investigated, using 23 undergraduates. Results indicate that interesting sentences were learned better, but they were allocated less attention. Students used some strategy other than attention to learn interesting material. (TJH)

As codirector of Harvard University's Project Zero, David Perkins has conducted long-term research programs on creativity, problem solving and reasoning, and learning in the arts, sciences, and everyday life. He explains a new program designed to help teachers connect thinking strategies with subject matter, so that students can better manage…

When teachers promote rote memorization as a single strategy, they foster only limited, short-term information retention. Elaboration strategies (creating analogies, paraphrasing, and summarizing) are stressed by the Cognitive Learning Strategies Project at the University of Texas. Includes three references. (MLH)

Two experiments concerning the effects of humor on learning in higher education are presented. The first experiment involved 161 Israeli college students; the second involved 132 Israeli college students. Groups taught with the aid of humor performed significantly better on examinations than did those taught without humor. (TJH)