The essays collected in this volume are concerned with the field of computer-based intelligent instruction. The papers are organized into four groups that address the following topics: particular theoretical approaches (3 titles); the development and improvement of tools and environments (3 titles); the power of well-engineered implementations and…

A year-long thematic unit for fifth-graders combines critical thinking and whole language frameworks to help students retain, understand, and make active use of knowledge within and across domains. Using systematic instruction in critical thinking, students explore the fundamental human concepts of race, sex, age, and power. David…

The relationship between self-regulation, using measures from the affective and cognitive domains, and academic performance was investigated for 62 middle-school (grade 6) students. Key aspects of self-regulated learning studied were planning and self-assessment. A range of affective variables, including self-concept and locus of control, was also…

Learning activities and questioning skills that teachers in Tasmania can use to determine a child's mathematics understanding are presented. Covered topics include division, multiplication, subtraction, addition, sorting and classification, one-to-one correspondence, patterns, ordering, and counting. Included for each topic are the aim, needed…

This paper describes the senior honors thesis (a multigenre research paper), and narrates the process by which a senior English major at the University of New Hampshire and her project advisor worked together on this semester-long project. In the first section, the multigenre research paper is defined as a work that combines poems, monologues,…

Recent advances in instructional knowledge, as well as their usefulness for fitting instructional strategies to individual students, are the subject of this four-chapter survey of research literature. Chapter 1 summarizes research on learning styles--the ways in which individuals perceive, analyze, interpret, and respond to learning situations.…

This essay proposes that systematic and reflective inquiry ought to become the underlying professional frame of mind that guides teachers, administrators, and policy officials. It is noted that the products of inquiry include rationales connecting recommended courses of action to intended outcomes, as well as the invention of techniques,…

As a preliminary study evaluating the relative merits of skill development and information exposure in speech communication classes, an opinion survey was administered to students taking two variants of the introductory course. The two courses, labeled "Basic Blend" and "Blend: Public Speaking Emphasis," included roughly equivalent units on…

The learning of mathematics was addressed in this study, with attention in this first volume focused on defining specific learning styles in mathematics, classifying individuals according to learning styles, relating achievement to learning styles, associating learning styles with localized hemispheric functioning of the brain, correlating…

An experiment employed cognitive based teaching and learning procedures in an undergraduate educational psychology course. The procedures were strongly influenced by David Ausubel's theory on learning and related skills. Ausubel defines effective learning as a process by which humans understand the structure of knowledge and consciously make…

The developer of the two-cone model of second language teaching and learning outlines the original model and its concepts, and presents some further ideas concerning it. The model represents the native and second languages as two cones with pronunciation at the apex, morphology and syntax (grammar) at the center, and vocabulary around grammar and…

Theories of human cognition and language suggest that there is a gap between the phases of perception and the phases of production of language. Unfortunately, this is often forgotten in language teaching, so that beginners' courses too frequently contain simplified and non-authentic linguistic input to assure that output does not lag too far…

The third of four symposium papers argues that, if instructional methods are to improve learning, they must have two aspects: a direct trace to a specific learning process, and empirical support that demonstrates their significance. Focusing on the tracing process, the paper presents an information processing model of learning that can be used by…

The purpose of this study was to determine whether different types of practice strategies are equally effective in facilitating encoding strategies and in subsequent information acquisition and retrieval by students identified as possessing high, medium, and low prior knowledge levels in a content area. Within the context of the…

The potential of the computer in helping foreign language students learn to use the grammatical principles of the target language for communicative purposes is discussed. A philosophical contrast between the terms of computer-assisted instruction (CAI) and computer-assisted language learning (CALL) precedes a discussion of current approaches to…