Although academics are accustomed to writing articles and books, they much less frequently write textbooks. When they do, they likely find it much harder to do well than they ever would have imagined. This difficulty is likely to surprise them, because they have considerable experience in writing research articles and in teaching. I argue in this…

The use of structural representations to convey spatial and chemical information is an integral part of organic chemistry. As a result, students must acquire skills to interpret and translate between the various diagrammatic forms. This article summarizes the skills sets, problem-solving strategies, and identified student difficulties in…

This study examines the influence of trait anxiety on working memory (WM) in safety and threat. Interactions between experimentally induced anxiety and WM performance (on different cognitive loads) have been reported in healthy, nonanxious subjects. Differences in trait anxiety may moderate these interactions. Accordingly, these interactions may…

The researchers explored the conceptual complexity of vocabulary in contemporary elementary-grades core science program textbooks to address two research questions: (1) Can a progression of concepts' complexity level be described across grades? (2) Was there gradual developmental growth of the most complex concepts' networks of associated concepts…

This article offers a solution to a significant problem for teachers and researchers of language learning that confounds their interpretations and expectations of test data: The apparent simplicity of tests of vocabulary knowledge masks the complexity of the constructs they claim to measure. The authors first scrutinise task elements in two widely…

Graphicacy is an important skill in today's society; however, the interpretation of graphs proofs to be more difficult than it might seem. In this study, we focus on one specific misinterpretation, the area misinterpretation of box plots, which is caused by incorrect heuristic processing of salient features of the box plot. In this study, we tried…

Automated text complexity measurement tools (also called readability metrics) have been proposed as a way to help teachers, textbook publishers, and assessment developers select texts that are closely aligned with the new, more demanding text complexity expectations specified in the Common Core State Standards. This article examines a critical…

If the goal of library instructional guidance is to provide students with the knowledge needed to acquire new skills in order to accomplish their learning objectives, then it is prudent to consider factors that impact learning. Cognitive load theory addresses several of these factors and is applicable to a wide-range of instructional devices used…

A chemistry concept inventory (Chemical Concept Inventory 3.0/CCI 3.0) has been developed for assessing students learning and identifying the alternative conceptions that students may have in general chemistry. The conceptions in question are assumed to be mainly learned in school and to a less degree in student's daily life. The inventory…

Two people in the same situation may ascribe very different meanings to their experiences. They will form different awareness, reacting differently to shared information. Various factors can give rise to this behavior. These factors include, but are not limited to, prior knowledge, training, biases, cultural factors, social factors, team vs.…

Text complexity has received increased attention due to the CCSS, which call for students to comprehend increasingly more complex texts as they progress through grades. Quantitative text complexity (or readability) indices are based on text attributes (e.g., sentence lengths, and lexical, syntactic, & semantic difficulty), quantified by…

This article uses systems and complexity theory to illustrate key characteristics of writing as a complex system. This illustration reveals how writing works on multiple levels of scale, and adds to the body of theoretical knowledge that can be taught within the discipline of writing studies. In so doing, it shows how a complex systems writing…

Over the last few years, we have witnessed a growing interest in computer-assisted pronunciation training (CAPT) tools and the commercial success of foreign language teaching applications that incorporate speech synthesis and automatic speech recognition technologies. However, empirical evidence supporting the pedagogical effectiveness of these…

One of the topics students have understanding difficulties in science is pressure. The study investigates the effectiveness of an active-learning environment on the students' understanding of the concept of pressure. The sample consisted of 30 students from a public secondary school in Turkey. This study used a pre-test, post-test,…

This work analyses students' failure in the 2019 Nationwide Chemistry Examination in Greece, which concerns secondary education graduates, competing for admission to higher education Greek institutions. The distinction of thinking skills into higher and lower order (HOTS and LOTS) is used as a theoretical tool for this analysis. The examination…