The purpose of this study was to investigate why some individuals who read refutational text demonstrate conceptual change learning, whereas others do not. Middle school students were asked to complete a pretest, read a refutational text while thinking aloud, complete a posttest, and participate in an interview. The data were analyzed in two…

This study investigated the relationship between task-induced involvement load and ESL learners' inferencing and learning word meanings from context. Thirty-two ESL learners were randomly assigned to one of three groups, with each group receiving a different version of a text that was assumed to differ from one another in terms of the degree of…

We compared how 8 religious believers (historians and clergy) and 8 skeptics (historians and scientists) read a series of documents on 2 topics: the Biblical Exodus and the origins of the first (American) Thanksgiving. Readings by religiously committed historians differed from those of their non-religious peers. Navigating between the competing…

This study employed an eye-tracking technique to examine students' visual attention when solving a multiple-choice science problem. Six university students participated in a problem-solving task to predict occurrences of landslide hazards from four images representing four combinations of four factors. Participants' responses and visual attention…

This study extends research on graduate student development by examining descriptive findings and validity of a self-report survey designed to capture graduate students' assessments of their teaching and research skills. Descriptive findings provide some information about areas of growth among graduate students' in the first years of their…

Ainsworth's (2006) DeFT framework posits that different representations may lead learners to use different strategies. We wanted to investigate whether students use different strategies, and more broadly, different cognitive activities in diagrams vs. in running text. In order to do so, we collected think-aloud protocol and other measures from 91…

This paper demonstrates and discusses the use of think aloud protocols (TAPs) as an approach for examining and confirming sources of differential item functioning (DIF). The TAPs are used to investigate to what extent surface characteristics of the items that are identified by expert reviews as sources of DIF are supported by empirical evidence…

Academic libraries are increasingly collecting e-books, but little research has investigated how students use e-books compared to print texts. This study used a prompted think-aloud method to gain an understanding of the information retrieval behavior of students in both formats. Qualitative analysis identified themes that will inform instruction…

The present study explores the relationship between working memory capacity (WMC) and think-alouds, focusing on the issue of reactivity. Two WM span tasks (listening span and operation span) were administered to 42 English-speaking learners of Spanish. Learner performance on reading comprehension and written production was measured under two…

This study aimed to isolate the conditions under which aversive stimulation is experienced as more or less discomforting/unpleasant. Discomfort was induced by playing loud noises through headphones while participants performed computer tasks. We employed 4 main conditions. Condition 1: the acceptance-based protocol (ACT), intended to integrate…

This paper reports on the findings of a pilot school-based professional development programme for Tanzanian primary school teachers launched in February 2011 and evaluated in December 2012 by the Ministry of Education and Vocational Training with the support of UNICEF. The study set out to investigate the effectiveness and efficiency of the pilot…

The purpose of the study was to determine the effects of self-management as a tier two enhancement to the group contingency intervention, Class-Wide Function-related Intervention Teams Program (CW-FIT). Two classrooms, first and fourth grade, and two students in each of the classrooms participated in the intervention. The group contingency…

Shared reading is a common practice in preschool classrooms and is purported to develop oral language, print concepts, and listening comprehension. The actual practice of reading aloud differed greatly among observed classrooms resulting in variations in potential positive effects. This study examines the potential effects of professional…

This paper reports on two projects which investigated graded readers (GRs) as meaningful input for learners of Japanese as a foreign language (JFL). Project One examined the intentions of six writers of Japanese GRs. A focus group interview demonstrated that the writers had a genuine communicative intent in the writing process. Project Two…

Classroom emotional climates (ECs) are interrelated with students' engagement with university courses. Despite growing interest in emotions and EC research, little is known about the ways in which social interactions and different subject matter mediate ECs in preservice science teacher education classes. In this study we investigated the EC…