The purpose of this study was to examine the psychometric properties of the Precalculus Concept Assessment (PCA), a 25-item multiple-choice instrument designed to assess student reasoning abilities and understanding of foundational calculus concepts (Carlson et al., 2010). When this study was conducted, the extant research on the PCA and the PCA…

For second language (L2) learners of Chinese who are native speakers of alphabetic languages, it is common that even after years of learning, reading discourse-length authentic Chinese texts (e.g., newspaper articles and novels) is still an intimidating, laborious, and frustrating task. Two factors, among others, contribute to this problem. One is…

This dissertation investigates the ways that natural languages evolve and what it means in the overall cultural evolution of society. Computational and modeling advances have made possible to explore large-scale text data and test hypothesis of language evolution. Similar to biological systems, natural languages are evolving systems with words as…

Programming skills are a vital part of many disciplines but can be challenging to teach and learn. Thus, the programming courses are considered difficult and a major stumbling block. To overcome these challenges, students could benefit from extensive individual support such as tutoring, but there are simply not enough qualified tutors available to…

This study examines factors that influence readers' cognitive processing (i.e., inference generation) and the development of a mental representation of text: comprehension skill and working memory (WM). Elementary students (N = 61) participated in causal questioning conditions with narrative texts to examine text- and knowledge-based inferences…

By asking questions, students can practice many cognitive processes, and these processes may reflect clues about their thinking skills. In order to understand students' cognitive levels in thinking, questions can be used as agents. Doing so, this study focuses on examining students' questions in terms of cognitive levels of Bloom's revised…

Algebra is a gatekeeper. For the 6% of students with dyscalculia (i.e., mathematical learning disabilities), an inability to pass algebra may significantly limit academic and career opportunities. Unfortunately, prior research on dyscalculia has focused almost exclusively on elementary-aged students' deficits in speed and accuracy in arithmetic…

The study was aimed to find out the effect of oral reading method based on self-evaluation on fluent reading and reading comprehension of fourth grade elementary students. The search was designed using a mixed method of nested mixed method patterns. In the quantitative dimension of the search from the quasi-experimental models, the unaligned…

Purpose: Graded readers can help English language learners to improve their reading ability. Literary texts with simplified language often differ from expository texts for teaching EFL learners. Although reading strategies have been used to facilitate comprehension, how students use strategies to process literary texts is underexplored. The…

Using a sample of 116 Norwegian undergraduate readers in this experimental study, we investigated whether reading informational text on a tablet versus on paper would lead to differences with respect to strategic text processing and text comprehension. Strategic text processing was measured by means of verbal protocol analysis, and text…

This study examined the relationship between lexical coverage (i.e., the percentage of known word tokens in a text) and second language (L2) reading comprehension. Several studies have suggested that adequate comprehension occurs between 95% and 98% coverage, but no study has investigated beginning-level learners reading under the conditions of…

We report results from a driving simulator paradigm we developed to test the fine temporal effects of verbal tasks on simultaneous tracking performance. A total of 74 undergraduate students participated in two experiments in which they controlled a cursor using the steering wheel to track a moving target and where the dependent measure was overall…

Background: Despite the fact that literacy instruction is a main focus of primary education, many children struggle to meet nationally set standards. Aims: We aimed to test which components of a comprehensive reading programme (ABRACADABRA:…

Objective: In numerous calls for reform to community college math instruction, contextualization has been identified as an effective approach to teaching and learning. Yet, little is known about how faculty contend with math contextualization and how they make decisions about its adoption. This study explored how community college faculty teaching…

Informed by theories of reading comprehension and prior reviews of reading comprehension intervention, this meta-analysis uniquely contributes to the literature because it describes the relative effects of various approaches to comprehension intervention for struggling readers in Grades 3 through 12. Findings from 64 studies demonstrate…