British psychologists have presented educational psychology as an academic discipline and have distanced themselves from practical teaching. Most have disavowed any particular knowledge about teaching and suggested that teachers themselves should discover the way academic concepts are applied to teaching. As students of human learning, educational…

A study sought to replicate and extend previous research which found that an emphasis on meaning in reading leads to better recall of lesson material than does an emphasis on accurate oral reading, and that the child who is taking an active turn recalls more of the lesson material than do the children who are following along. Six third-grade…

This publication was developed to help teachers expand their choices for teacher-student instructional interaction. It identifies the key issues in the design of instruction and develops a common vocabulary surrounding instructional improvement. The role of the teacher as decision maker is emphasized. A description is given of the four interacting…

College professors in the various disciplines can improve their students' reading ability by instructing them to use reading to learn the discipline. First, professors can examine the goals of their syllabi (academic, utilitarian, romantic, developmental or emancipatory) in relation to reading, since most courses are predicated upon reading. These…

Two hypotheses, the cognitive capacity hypothesis and the selective attention hypothesis, try to account for the facilitation effects of prior knowledge activation. They appear to be mutually exclusive since they predict different recall patterns as a result of prior knowledge activation. This study was designed to determine whether the two…

At Massachusetts Bay Community College a course was designed to create a transition from the process-based basic writing course to the traditional required freshman English course. WTG 100 was designed as an inquiry into academic writing, where students would learn about the various discourse conventions and expectations they would encounter as…

This report of a conference dedicated to the growth of professionalism within the field of learning assistance begins with a brief introduction reviewing the origins and objectives of the sponsoring association, followed by 10 representative papers. The papers have the following titles and authors: "The Classroom Research Project: Results at…

Focusing on techniques for teaching students to integrate diverse ideas at a deep level of cognitive processing, a study evaluated an idea integration package for teaching writing in the college classroom. Subjects, 29 college students from an introductory psychology class at a Utah university, were divided into two groups. The integration group…

A series of conferences with supervising teachers involving 10 female students training to be teachers of young children was examined. Conferences were conducted after the supervising teacher had observed the teaching of the students. All participating students were early childhood education majors involved in student teaching at least 25 hours…

Even when the socioeconomic background is controlled, there is still a difference between blacks and whites in academic achievement. Studies have shown that, though social class is a factor in that difference, ethnicity is the primary factor. This report discusses ideologies that have tried to explain that ethnic difference. It discusses the…

This paper takes the position that logical knowledge is distinct from conceptual and procedural knowledge and can make a unique contribution to the understanding of knowledge acquisition. This view of logical knowledge departs from the traditional Piagetian view of stages and the overriding view of logic as the sole means of constructing new…

This paper examines the issue of the loss of less competent children from schools as a result of the emphasis upon academic excellence. Studies are cited indicating that more than 90 percent of all secondary principals feel that their schools are improving; yet, as many as 25 percent of all children in a given sixth-grade class will drop out…

Using word processors and the traditional handwriting method, a study investigated the relationship of learning styles to performance in twelfth graders' written compositions. Subjects (n=55) were enrolled in a public school in east central Mississippi. The study hypothesized that students using word processors and those using the traditional…

The instructional components of mediation, a teaching technique used in dynamic assessment, were evaluated with 100 four-year-old children attending daycare or preschools in London, Ontario. The effects of familiarization with task materials, task-specific rule teaching, and elaborated feedback were assessed using a pretest-posttest design.…

This paper provides a brief overview of some of the current thought on teaching problem-solving and decision-making skills and presents selected exercises that have been used successfully in a graduate course in problem-solving and decision-making strategies. In addition to learning theories that are presented in order to help learners understand…