This study reports findings from a 10-day professional development institute on curricular trends involving 19 secondary mathematics and science teachers and administrators from Japan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Korea, Philippines, the United States, and People's Republic of China. Participants explored the roles of culture, place, and…

This article describes the process of implementing a museum experience into the course content of a literacy methods course. A museum workshop was designed to help graduate students better understand the concept of literacy as a language-based learning process that builds on and extends each child's understanding of the world. Framed by relevant…

A hypothetical model was formulated to explore factors that influenced academic and clinical achievement for undergraduate nursing students. Sixteen latent variables were considered including the students' background, gender, type of first language, age, their previous successes with their undergraduate nursing studies and status given for…

Teachers can modify their instructional strategies with minimal training and effort, and this can result in increases in their students' self-efficacy. Self-efficacy judgments are based on four sources of information: an individual's own past performance, vicarious experiences of observing the performances of others, verbal persuasion that one…

Animated demonstrations are increasingly used for presenting the functionality of various computer applications. Nevertheless, our understanding of whether and how students integrate this technology into their learning strategies remains limited. Although, several studies have examined animated demonstrations' learning efficiency, this study aims…

This paper explores whether the principles of cognitive load and multimedia theory are mediated by cognitive style, gender, and prior knowledge. Participants were 91 children aged 10-11 years (54 boys, 37 girls), each assigned to one of two presentation modes. In Condition 1 children were presented with diagrams supported by printed textual…

This study investigated the impact of prior knowledge, writing task, and hypertext format on university students' comprehension of multisource hypertext. Fifty-two students categorized as having high or low prior knowledge studied hypertext consisting of seven component texts on the topic of social influence. Some students were given a summary…

As environmental changes become a significant societal issue, elementary science curricula need to develop students' understanding about the key concepts of energy and climate change. For teachers, developing quality learning experiences involves establishing what their students' prior understanding about energy and climate change are. A survey…

People learn in many different ways and in many different places. What is learned informally or experientially is often the same or similar to what may be learned in traditional formal learning environments. There are many reasons why recognizing experiential learning is viable educational option, more so in today's economy than ever before. Prior…

This article articulates a framework for examining the quality of formative assessment practice and provides empirical evidence in support of one of its components. Based on a study of middle school science, the study examines the accuracy of teachers' judgments of students' understanding and the relationship of such accuracy to middle school …

Special Education (SPED) in Scotland was a six-week study abroad program where pre-service special education teachers lived with host families and observed in Scottish schools in the area of special education. The program included coursework in the area of Emotional Behavioral Disabilities and traveling. This study sought to determine the impact…

Educational psychology has indicated that prior knowledge is a potentially important educational variable. Recent and earlier research in educational psychology has shown that 30 to 60% of the variance in study results could be explained by this variable. Insight into these factors should influence the return on education. A common theoretical…

From the view of schema-transfer theory, the use of schemata with their several functions gives an explanation for the facilitative effect of prior knowledge on learning processes. This report gives a theoretical exploration of the concept of schemata, underlying schema theories, and functions of schemata to indicate the importance of schema…

A study described college student writers as they constructed arguments, creating a picture of school-based argument drawn not from ideal models of arguments as envisioned by educators, but from experiences of students themselves. A three-part framework that synthesizes rhetorical perspectives on argument with a social-cognitive view of the…

This paper re-examines the controversial issues of the binding parameter in second language acquisition or anaphoric-binding, suggesting that the first language, rather than universal grammar (UG), plays an important role in interpreting the anaphora. In reviewing findings from other related disciplines, including linguistics and first language…