A discussion of the ease or difficulty of learning vocabulary words in a second language looks at a variety of issues in second language instruction. Research on factors in vocabulary learning is discussed, focusing on such factors as similarity in form and morphology, deceptive morphological structure, different syntactic patterning in the native…

The process of instructional consultation with feedback at postsecondary institutions is explored. In the past decade, instructional support to faculty has become a priority in many institutions of higher education. One popular method of helping faculty improve their teaching is through consulting with them about their teaching and feeding back…

This book provides the teacher with a framework for assessing children's potential to learn, taking into account cognitive skills, specifically similarity thinking skills, as well as the emotional status of children, particularly the development of independent security. Complex ideas are introduced through the use of case studies and anecdotes.…

Preplays (critical material presented before a televised program) were inserted before three sections of a televised story to determine if they would improve children's attention and comprehension by providing overall plot structure for selecting and integrating important story events. The preplays varied on two orthogonal dimensions: presence or…

Individual differences in fourth grade students' abilities to profit from experimenter-provided picture adjunct aids on prose recall tasks were examined. It was hypothesized that poor paired associate learners would benefit from picture adjunct aids to a greater extent than good paired associate learners. A secondary aim was to assess the effects…

This paper explores languages for communicating precise ideas within limited domains, which include mathematical notation and general purpose and high level computer programming languages. Low-level properties of such natural artificial languages are discussed, with emphasis on those in which names are chosen for concepts and symbols are chosen…

Under normal instructional circumstances, some youngsters learn programming in BASIC or LOGO better than others. Clinical investigations of novice programmers suggest that this happens in part because different students bring different patterns of learning to the programming context. Many students disengage from the task whenever trouble occurs,…

The purpose of this study was to examine the thinking underlying the questions posed by a science teacher to her seventh grade students in an instructional activity called Mind Games, in which hypothetical situations focussed on scientific issues are proposed and explored at least once during each major instructional unit. Mind games are conveyed…

This manual describes the theory behind the Learning Process Questionnaire (LPQ) used in Australia and defines what the subscale and scale scores mean. The LPQ is a 36-item self-report questionnaire that yields scores on three basic motives for learning and three learning strategies, and on the approaches to learning that are formed by these…

An attempt was made to increase Swedish preschool children's understanding of aspects of commercial enterprise, particularly those of "the shop," by introducing a specific didactic approach to preschool education. Of particular interest were two aspects of the shop: advertising and the principle of trade. A total of 77 children up to 7 years of…

This report presents a general framework for studying the acquisition and cognitive representation of biomedical concepts and analyzing the nature and development of misconceptions. The central approach of the report is a selective and highly concentrated analysis of the true nature of clusters of complex concepts and the manner in which they are…

Over the past several years, one study after another has uncovered a positive relationship between interpersonal interaction and individual achievement. According to a handful of these studies, interaction is more effective than are individually-based strategies for promoting reasoning. We give our attention here to the link that possibly exists…

A theory of learning based on recent insights from sociology and semiotics is explicated. Building on the work of Vygotsky, Dewey, Halliday, Barnes, Deely, Eisner, and others, this sociosemiotic model of learning is used as a frame of reference for thinking about the process by which texts are created from sensation. It is argued that the process…

The ninth in a series of studies to improve the strategies that poor reading comprehenders use to study text began as a training study containing three components: strategies to be taught, instructional mode by which they would be taught, and the metacognitive environment for the instruction. After identifying four strategies that merited…

The five papers in this symposium contribute to a dialog on the aims and methods of computer education, and indicate directions future research must take if necessary information is to be available to make informed decisions about the use of computers in schools. The first two papers address the question of what is required for a student to become…