Biology education research often utilizes the terms learning, memorizing, studying, and understanding without providing their specific definition. When definitions have been provided, they are often inconsistent across publications. As part of a larger research study, we interviewed 11 participants on 2 occasions while they were enrolled in a…

During the past two decades, an increasing number of European countries have introduced language requirements for residency, citizenship, and sometimes even for entry to the country and family reunification. As a result, democratic rights as well as basic human rights have come to depend upon an individual's ability to obtain a certain score on a…

The aim of this study is to focus on the verbal stimuli of the Vocabulary subtest of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale -- Fourth Edition (WAIS-IV). To our knowledge, this is the first research to examine whether the abstractness/concreteness and the lexical category of the words in the WAIS-IV vocabulary subtest influence the ability to…

Some children experience more difficulty than others becoming literate, often at great emotional, intellectual, social, and economic cost to themselves, but also to those who love and care for them, and for society at large. The causes of those difficulties and what to do about them have been the source of much research and sometimes heated…

Children and youth experiencing homelessness face unique challenges in accessing and succeeding in school. Subtitle VII-B of the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, reauthorized in 2015 by Title IX, Part A of the Every Student Succeeds Act (42 U.S.C. § 11431 et seq.; hereafter the "McKinney-Vento Act"), establishes the definition of…

This chapter compares two teachers' definitional practices in two Content-and-Language-Integrated-Learning (CLIL) lessons, i.e. physics and history, which are taught in English in Finland. It adopts Dalton-Puffer's (Eur J Appl Linguistics 1(2):216-253, 2013; Cognitive discourse functions: specifying an integrative interdisciplinary construct. In:…

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a scientifically validated framework that has been included in policy like the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015 and the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008. However, studies have pointed out the variability in definitions and implementation surrounding UDL. In order to clarify this conversation,…

Children's ability to learn words with multiple meanings may be hindered by their adherence to a one-to-one form-to-meaning mapping bias. Previous research on children's learning of a novel meaning for a familiar word (sometimes called a "pseudohomophone") has yielded mixed results, suggesting a range of factors that may impact when…

"Online learning"--learning that involves interactions that are mediated through using digital, typically internet-based, technology--is pervasive, multi-faceted, and evolving, creating opportunities and challenges for educational research in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. In this special issue, we advance an interdisciplinary agenda…

Inclusion is seen as an ethical obligation, grounded in notions of equity and social justice for all groups and at all stages of education, with higher education (HE) representing a distinctive space where the inclusion agenda is becoming more influential. However, inclusion is also increasingly recognised as an ambiguous concept that might have…

Dyslexia is a specific learning disability caused by a neurological problem. It is a worldwide problem with a prevalence of 5-10% of the population. It is described mainly by difficulties in reading, spelling, accuracy, fluency, and decoding abilities. This article is chiefly concerned to provide an overview of dyslexia, some key issues based on…

Federal discourse pertaining to college access requires clarified definition. Use of the college access construct has become commonplace, yet no unified refinement of meaning exists. This study, which covered U.S. presidential communications from January 2009 to October 2021, addressed the abstraction of language as leaders presented ideas,…

Through the work of Y-PLAN (Youth--Plan, Learn, Act, Now) youth-led action research, the University of California Berkeley Center for Cities + Schools (CC+S) has focused its research on youth experiencing homelessness in California public schools. This research analyzed the McKinney-Vento Act from system-wide implementation perspectives, as well…

Students are constantly bombarded with messages about academic success and the importance of getting good grades. However, definitions of academic success are more complex than a letter grade. Many indicators to define academic success extend primarily from students' perspectives and ignore how teachers' definitions of success. This is an…

In this response to commentators, I agree with those who suggested that the distinction between exemplar- and abstraction-based accounts is something of a false dichotomy and therefore move to an abstractions-made-of-exemplars account under which (a) we store all the exemplars that we hear (subject to attention, decay, interference, etc.) but (b)…