A self-paced reading experiment investigated processing of sentences containing a noun-phrase that could temporarily be mistaken as the direct-object argument of a verb in a subordinate clause but actually constituted the syntactic subject of the main clause (often referred to as an "early" vs. "late closure" ambiguity). Subcategorization…

The online learning environment provides the opportunity for remote groups of students to interact with instructors and each other. Most web based learning platforms facilitate synchronous online discussions between participants. These discussion forums are designed to replicate the face to face tutorial setting and provide a medium for the…

The development of the concept of matter was explored in children aged 3-13. Eighty four children were asked to classify four sets of objects and matter and to explain their classifications during interviews. Younger children tended to classify using a mixture of extensive properties (properties of objects) and intensive properties (properties of…

This article examines the social values of rural schoolteachers under the conditions of the market economy in the countryside. It presents a comparative sociopedagogical analysis of the evolution of value orientations and life attitudes of rural schoolteachers during the years of the radical social and political reforms in Russia through the…

The success of policies to attract adults back to the learning of mathematics, at various levels, is often linked to questions of motivation. However, motivations depend on relevant beliefs, attitudes and emotions about mathematics--which themselves reflect, together with experiences with maths in school and in the home, wider cultural discourses…

The present article reports on a study investigating the interaction of a reading comprehension test with gender in a formal testing context and the performance of males and females on reading test items with regard to demands on strategy use. Participants were 187 (59 = female and 128 = male) international students ranging from 17 to 20 years of…

In this article I describe a number of ways in which non-western cultures have adopted and used western educational approaches, forming an illustrative typology of these adaptations. I provide an illustration(s) of each category in the typology, briefly presenting the history of the category, detailing its modern state, and discussing selected…

Background: The marked degree of heterogeneity in persons with developmental dyslexia has motivated the investigation of possible subtypes. Attempts have proceeded both from theoretical models of reading and the application of unsupervised learning (clustering) methods. Previous cluster analyses of data obtained from persons with reading…

Knowing how campus-based students engage in key online and general learning practices can play a central role in managing and developing university education. Knowledge in this area is limited, however, despite recent advances in student engagement research, and widespread adoption of online learning systems. This paper responds to the need to…

This study examined the effects of message constraints and labels on collaborative argumentation in asynchronous online discussions. Thirty-eight undergraduate students in an introductory educational technology course were assigned to one of three groups. In one group, students posted specific types of messages using a prescribed set of message…

This article summarizes a 2000 study of school garden programs and their variation and the impact of such variation on 427 third-grade students' sense of responsibility and attitudes toward science and the environment. A teacher questionnaire was developed to gain insight into how teachers use school gardens with their students and in their…

This study examines the interaction between learning styles and academic performance in an anatomy course that blends traditional lecture with an array of hands-on activities. Participants were 19 students (ranging from 18 to 24 years of age) at Columbia College, Chicago. The Felder-Silverman Index of Learning Styles and a 25-item pre-test and…

This analysis evaluates the receptive tests of targeted lexical knowledge in the written medium, which are typically used in empirical research into lexical acquisition from reading foreign/second language texts. Apart from the types of second language cues or prompts, and the language of the responses, the main issues revolve around: (a) the…

The use of a dispositional framework in the preparation of teachers, especially one that attends to issues of social justice, has generated considerable debate of late. In this article, the author argues that assessing teacher candidates' dispositions related to social justice is both reasonable and defensible. She explains why social justice…

This study examined the generality of the logarithmic to linear transition in children's representations of numerical magnitudes and the role of subjective categorization of numbers in the acquisition of more advanced understanding. Experiment 1 (49 girls and 41 boys, ages 5-8 years) suggested parallel transitions from kindergarten to second grade…