The current study aims to explore how children explain the concepts of biology and how biological knowledge develops across ages by focusing on the structure and functions of the digestive system. The study was conducted with 60 children. The data were collected through the interviews conducted within a think-aloud protocol. The interview data…

Purpose: In light of growing interest in the maker movement and electronic textiles (e-textiles) as an educational technology, the purpose of this paper is to characterize competence change in undergraduate students who participated in a semester-length course that used e-textiles. Design/methodology/approach: This qualitative and exploratory…

The purpose of this paper is to assess the validity of multiple-choice questions in measuring fourth grade students' ability to interpret graphs related to physical science topics such as motion and temperature. We administered a test including 6 multiple-choice questions to 28 fourth grade students. Students were asked to explain their thinking…

This study explored how undergraduate students perceive, self-regulate, and respond to feedback from instructors on written work. The general problem was that students in college are not prepared to practice metacognitive regulation to promote learning, particularly in the context of utilizing instructor feedback on written work to improve their…

This "think-aloud" study examines how a group of American Jewish teenagers read historical documents that addressed what it has meant over time to be American and/or Jewish. It demonstrates that students use a variety of sense-making strategies as they read about the past, many of which fall beyond the boundaries of critical historical…

South Africa's esteem is low with regard to current learner achievement in mathematics. Results from international studies, such as TIMMS and SACMEQ, continuously indicate that South African learners perform below international benchmarks in mathematics. Research and evaluation studies assert that teacher practices and poor early mathematics…

Some metacognitive mental activities were explored on chemical reading activities as specific judgments called metacognitive judgments. A think-aloud protocol was carried out to fifteen chemistry teacher candidates to express their judgments on chemical reading activities for question posing. Two chemical articles were designed to stimulate these…

Self-service design tools are flooding K-12 environments and altering the way instruction can be designed and delivered. As a result, schools are utilizing existing academics to both design and teach their own curriculum. These academics, called "designers-by-assignment", tend to have limited training in instructional systems design and…

Students often face difficulties when presented with chemical structures and asked to relate them to properties of those substances. Learning to relate structures to properties, both in predicting properties based on chemical structures and interpreting properties to infer structure, is pivotal in students' education in chemistry. This troublesome…

General chemistry is the first undergraduate course in which students further develop their understanding of fundamental chemical concepts. Many of these fundamental topics highlight the numerous conceptual interconnections present in chemistry. However, many students possess incoherent knowledge structures regarding these topics. Therefore,…

Design-based learning (DBL) is an educational approach in which students gather and apply theoretical knowledge to solve design problems. In this study, we examined how critical DBL dimensions (project characteristics, design elements, the teacher's role, assessment, and social context) are applied by teachers in the redesign of DBL projects.…

This article aims at understanding cognitive strategies which are involved in reading academic texts in English as a L2/FL. Specifically, we focus on reading comprehension when a text is read either using Google translator or not. From this perspective we must consider the reading process in its complexity not only as a decoding process. We follow…

The purpose of this study was to examine the associations between reading motivation and inference generation while reading. Undergraduate participants (N = 69) read two science articles while thinking aloud, completed a standardized reading comprehension assessment, and self reported their habitual reading motivation. Findings indicate that…

David Narter has taught English and AP Language and Composition at Leyden High School for 19 years. As a high school English teacher, it breaks his heart to see a gradual shedding of pleasure reading and its academic benefits. Yet, it is a trend he says he has grown familiar with among his best students, who, as they grow older, are taught that…

The purpose of this research study was to explore the efficacy of role-playing and coaching in mixed-reality environments for the acquisition and generalization of social skills leading to successful job interview performance. Using a multiple baseline across participants design, five young adults with intellectual disability practiced…