Assessment of career interests in 80 undergraduate students enrolled in a course and practicum on the psychology of mental retardation found no significant changes in career interest from pretest to posttest. Students with prior exposure to individuals with mental retardation (especially as volunteers) reported high levels of career interest.…

A study of 82 Canadian college freshmen investigated working memory, verbal ability, and prior knowledge as predictors of quality of students' lecture notes, lecture summaries, and content recall. Students with higher working memory benefitted more from listening to the lecture than from listening and taking notes. Quality of summaries predicted…

Adult educators are challenged to maintain their commitment to social change as their work is co-opted by the training reform/lifelong learning agenda. Using ongoing reflection on practice, adult educators can challenge that agenda's dominant conceptions of recognition of prior learning. (SK)

Describes a study of college students that was conducted to examine the effectiveness of integrating different computerized visual-presentation strategies in learning different contents; the effect of identical presentation strategies on students possessing different levels of prior knowledge; and whether the use of different visual strategies…

Randomly selected high school students (n=13) who studied an ecology unit were interviewed, and narrative data analyzed for changes in knowledge schema. Data support the current theory that the amount and quality of prior knowledge substantially influence gains in new knowledge and are closely linked to a capacity to apply higher-order cognitive…

Presents results from ongoing research about non-adapted language switches, highlighting a longitudinal study of an adult learner of third-language (L3) Swedish with first-language (L1) English and second-language (L2) German. The study is based on 844 non-adapted language switches. Researchers identified four types of switches. Results indicated…

Discussion of student achievement and persistence rates in science, engineering, and mathematics disciplines focuses on a study of college students that evaluated the joint contributions of academic background measures and other factors, including self-beliefs, toward the explanation of overall grade performance. Describes correlations between…

Discusses how biologists use evolutionary theory and provides examples of how evolutionary biologists test hypotheses on specific modes of selection and evolution. Presents an example of the successful predictive power of one evolutionary hypothesis. Contains 38 references. (DDR)

Investigates the intuitive beliefs held by students (N=2326) about a number of well-known physical events. Finds that the context of the question has a clear effect on the frequency with which different options are selected in physically similar situations. (DDR)

The use of students' out-of-school experiences in science education is part of a wider problem related to the relevance of science in society. States that relevance in science education has not been systematically studied. (DDR)

Describes a study of 699 undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in 33 live, interactive telecourses that investigated satisfaction with various facets of the telecourse, demographic characteristics, and experience with previous telecourses. Results show gender differences and prior experience had the greatest effect on course satisfaction.…

Describes a constructivist model of an online course being taught at the University of South Florida on science, technology, and society interaction (STS) and its relationship to science teaching. Accommodates varied approaches to learning and differing levels of prior knowledge and includes a virtual resource center with free access and embedded…

This study of students at the University of Tampere (Finland) analyzes how changes in relevance criteria are related to changes in problem stages during the task performance process in information retrieval. Provides a conceptual framework, including Kuhlthau's information search process model and prior knowledge; and compares bibliographic…

Explores the impact of analogies and prior content knowledge on reading comprehension of expository texts by both first and second language readers. Written recall protocols were analyzed for two texts. Readers were university students of French or English as a foreign language. Analogy was to have a debilitating effect on comprehension regardless…

Discusses research into the effect of background knowledge on English for Academic Purposes (EAP) tests and discusses EAP tests in which the content of at least some of the test components is related to students' fields of academic study. Suggests that for international EAP tests, English for specific academic purposes testing be abandoned.…