Discusses the principles of teaching that can help students to be actively, purposefully engaged in their learning. Describes current innovations in reading, language arts, and mathematics education. Introduces the constructivist principles and teaching practices that can facilitate implementation of current instruction innovations. (MOK)

This study examined the effects of work with video-mediated cases on the meaning preservice teachers made of classroom teaching and learning vignettes. Analysis of interviews and discussions indicated that one-third of the topics discussed were adopted, transformed, or created by respondents for use in describing personal meaning making. (SM)

Evaluated hypothesis that cognitive antecedents of word recognition are domain-specific and unrelated to higher-order domain-general cognitive abilities in a longitudinal study of Hebrew-speaking children. Found that kindergarten domain-specific measures accounted for 33 percent of variance in Grade 1 word recognition, even after controlling for…

Describes a study of the listening comprehension of first-year, nonnative English speakers in a large North American university that sought to find out how students--all economics majors--were coping with listening to economics lectures and to try an experiment in mentoring by linking them with a lecture buddy. The mentoring project was found to…

Discusses the need for educational environments that allow for authentic learning. Shows how the Internet enables practice in which students are able to manipulate concepts for the sake of getting things done and receiving feedback regarding how well the application of an understanding worked. Provides examples of three learning activities on the…

Argues for the use of poetry reading in second language classrooms. Reviews literary and linguistic theories of poetry and synthesizes these theories within a psycholinguistic model of poetry reading, according to which the central aspect of poetry reading is the conscious negotiation of the formal structures of language for comprehension…

Challenges the assumption that female students enter college possessing greater verbal abilities than male students. The results of reading comprehension exercises conducted in introductory macroeconomics courses over a four-year period reveal little dichotomy in gender-specific performance. These findings are generally supported by SAT scores.…

Specific difficulties for the secondary student with reading difficulties are described, followed by a literature review of most promising practices, including peer tutoring that incorporates comprehension strategy instruction and elaborative strategies in history and science classes. Research using "Inspiration" software to generate spatially…

Investigated the effects of readers' gender, topic familiarity, enjoyment, and interest on second language reading. University students of Spanish completed a reading passage each day, a written recall comprehension task, and a questionnaire. Findings suggest that in addition to linguistic factors, other variables such as gender, passage content,…

Describes a study of nursing students in a Canadian junior college that was conducted to test the effectiveness of presenting descriptive and instructive captions on illustrations in instructional materials. Comprehension and recall of the illustrations' content are examined, and treatments for the experimental and control groups are described.…

The article describes an instructional intervention appropriate to improving student attitudes and achievement through attributional retraining and instruction in learning strategies, particularly mnemonic strategies. Application of the approach with learning-disabled students in reading comprehension and mathematics is reported. (DB)

The performance of 24 language-disordered children (ages 3-8) on an ambiguity detection task was compared to that of children matched for comprehension level and children matched for cognitive level. It is concluded that communicative factors, both active primary comprehension and social communicative knowledge, had a stronger influence than the…

Children's ability to adopt perspectives and then apply schematic information on-line while listening to stories was investigated in 2 experiments with 59 second graders and 60 fourth graders. Although both subject groups had the knowledge to identify errors, fourth graders were more likely to apply such knowledge on-line during comprehension.…

Contrasts immediate and delayed effects of focused freewriting and focused thought on lecture comprehension. Finds the immediate effect was increased comprehension. However, on a one-week delayed test, the performance of the focused freewriting group was below that of the focused-thought group. (Author/NL)

Investigates whether frequent small group readings in school increases comprehension scores and the number and complexity of comments and questions from children of low socioeconomic status. Finds that story reading in small groups increases comprehension and the number and complexity of questions and comments. (RS)