Available literature pertaining to the following topics was reviewed: cognitive skill retention across the life span, literacy and basic skills retention, and policy implications of skill retention work. Among the key findings of the review were the following: (1) available evidence suggests that adult literacy skill retention may vary…

This article provides a brief introduction to learning organization and systems thinking. It contains three experiential learning activities designed to teach systems thinking concepts. The first activity, "Pellets," helps learners discover the advantages of applying systems thinking to the solutions of workplace problems. The next two…

This paper briefly reviews the learning outcome aspects of seven recent follow-up studies completed for seven different transfer discipline areas at William Rainey Harper College (Illinois). It notes an increasing interest by the field of institutional research in evaluating how students learn. Faculty in the fields of psychology, English,…

This study investigates whether the Student Mediation Model is useful for understanding how undergraduates learn from international teaching assistants (ITAs) teachers who are not from the United States and are not native English-speakers. The study examines a sample of over 8,300 students enrolled in beginning and more advanced calculus and…

A study examined a reading strategy--story retelling--to determine whether it would enhance comprehension, vocabulary, and develop a sense of competency in students who lacked reading strategies. Subjects of the study were 10 learning disabled children, ages 12-14. The study was conducted over an 8-week period. Two samples were created using…

A study examined the effect of whole language philosophy as compared to a more traditional reading program on children's reading comprehension scores. The study included a review of current research indicating the importance of teachers stating the topic prior to reading as well as the importance of students' oral reading ability to assess reading…

Individualized instruction significantly improves students' pedagogical and motivational outcomes. The study described here sought to characterize tutorial behaviors that could lead to these benefits and to consider why these behaviors should be pedagogically useful. The experiment studied 16 undergraduate and graduate university students learning…

New research on brain development has profound implications in the areas of child development and education. This review of the research describes how the brain develops to shape children's growing intelligence, addressing such questions as: (1) What are the brain's functions? (2) What are the critical or sensitive periods in brain development?…

Several studies have shown the difficulties students encounter in making sense of situations involving rate of change. This study concerns how students discover errors and refine their knowledge when working with rate of change. The part of the study reported here concerns the responses of four precalculus students to a task which asked them to…

This book calls for a radical reappraisal of the phenomenon of literacy, and hence for a profound shift in educational practice. Through close attention to the multitude of objects which children constantly produce (drawings, cuttings-out, writings, collages), the book suggests a set of principles that reveal the underlying coherence of children's…

The role that individual learning proficiency, individual personality characteristics, and chance occurrences in the learner's environment play in self-directed professional development was examined through semistructured interviews with a purposeful sample of eight professional men and women of high achievement with no postsecondary schooling in…

Visual organizers also called graphic organizers, formal organizers, and visual strategies are visual representations of concepts and ideas. When used in classrooms, they provide students with tools to make thought and organizational processes visible, and they serve as organizational frameworks to promote thinking and language development. This…

Investigations of changes in conceptions during physics instruction are the logical and necessary steps to follow successful international research on students' preinstructional conceptions. The theoretical perspective integrates currently available frameworks of cognition, cognitive states, and cognitive processes in physics. Particular emphasis…

The convergence of the teaching as assessment movement and Total Quality Management (TQM) has implications for higher education, and communication department should adapt their pedagogy to the best of the thrusts in higher education. The Department of Communication at Central Missouri State University contains 2 of the original 10 programs that…

The methods outlined in this guide offer teachers a variety of ways to stimulate interest, enhance concentration, increase understanding, and improve memory in their students. Chapter 1 discusses the LEARN (Learning Efficiently And Remembering Mnemonics) system, a set of strategies that help students use a variety of processing styles to a greater…