A study analyzed the prior knowledge state of two university populations: students at the Open University (OU) of the Netherlands and students at the University of Limburg (UL). Analysis of the prior knowledge state was based on an extensive analysis of the literature in relation to theories, models, and practice-based strategies about the…

Much of the extensive diagnosis, testing, and data collection that now occur in reading clinics is time consuming and unnecessary. Private and university-based reading clinics, however, need to provide worthwhile activities that support students' literacy learning while they consider the important relationship of instruction and evaluation. After…

Previous research has cast doubt on children's ability to use specified evidence when making causal inferences, or, indeed, to differentiate between the specified evidence and their own preconceptions, or "prior theories." The present study continues previous work by distinguishing between children's reasoning in conditions where…

Various researchers have associated meaningful problem solving with methods guided directly by a conceptual knowledge base. By contast, a meaningless solving course, or sequence of operations, is essentially independent of the solver's conceptual understanding of the problem under consideration. This paper is the first to document a meaningless,…

To determine the relative importance of school and individual factors in the determination of science learning, achievement test scores were analyzed in relation to individual- and school-level factors in a national sample of about 2,000 tenth-grade students participating in the Longitudinal Study of American Youth. Hierarchical linear analyses…

This paper examines children's responses to black and white illustrations in particular silhouettes. The study had two components; the first examined fifth graders' reactions to picture books using silhouette illustrations. The second part of the research analyzed students' responses when a dramatic context was used to view and respond to selected…

In order to investigate elementary school students' understanding of historical time, this study conducted open-ended interviews with 58 children in kindergarten through sixth grade. The students were asked to place nine illustrations from various periods of American history in chronological order and to talk about the reasoning behind the order…

Designed to provide specific instructional suggestions for integrating basic reading and writing instruction in the elementary school, the lesson ideas presented in this booklet are applicable across grade levels and can be used with any basic reading and language arts textbook series. The 30 ideas cover a variety of areas, including the…

Two experiments were conducted to test the hypotheses that the ability to draw inferences from a text about an unstated agent is based on the quality of information available to the reader, and that the quality of the information is itself based on the unique nature of cues embedded in the text and on the relevance of prior knowledge held by the…

This 3-year project examined the processes and strategies employed by English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) and native-English-speaking students when learning from academic texts. A conceptual model guided the analysis of talk aloud protocols elicited from students as they answered questions from textbook materials used in an introductory…

A study investigated the influence of key factors (general comprehension ability, prior knowledge of passage topic, interest in passage topic, and locus of control) on training at-risk college students in the use of graphic organizers as a cognitive learning strategy. Subjects, 60 college freshmen required to take a developmental reading/study…

One recommendation of the 1989 California Strategic Plan for Adult Education is the use of EduCard. EduCard, the Adult Education Access Card, is a means of giving learners access to information about educational opportunities and providing administrators with machine-readable information on learners' prior education and traiing. Three models are:…

Designed to explore what is being done to help learning disabled (LD) readers develop comprehension skills, this paper reviews research in teaching reading comprehension to LD students and develops generalizations from the research to guide reading comprehension instruction for such students. The 10 generalizations presented and discussed in the…

The purpose of this paper is to review the relevant evidence concerning the relationship between knowledge and its effect on learning, with an end to answering the questions: (1) How important is knowledge to learning? and (2) How does the relative importance of knowledge change with development? The paper is divided into three main sections:…

Two descriptive pilot studies employed a multi-group and pre- and post-design to analyze the relationship between students' exposure to computers and reductions in their computer anxiety scores and the relationship between the amount of computer exposure to computer anxiety scores. In the first study, standardized measures of computer anxiety and…