The influence of top-down cognitive control on 2 putatively distinct forms of distraction was investigated. Attentional capture by a task-irrelevant auditory deviation (e.g., a female-spoken token following a sequence of male-spoken tokens)--as indexed by its disruption of a visually presented recall task--was abolished when focal-task engagement…

One of the great challenges ensemble directors face is selecting high-quality repertoire that matches the musical and technical levels of their ensembles. Thoughtful repertoire selection can lead to increased student motivation as well as greater enthusiasm for the music program from parents, administrators, teachers, and community members. Common…

Anatomists often use images in assessments and examinations. This study aims to investigate the influence of different types of images on item difficulty and item discrimination in written assessments. A total of 210 of 460 students volunteered for an extra assessment in a gross anatomy course. This assessment contained 39 test items grouped in…

In an era of professional standards for educators and teacher evaluations linked to measures of student achievement, researchers use data from student information systems to address research questions linking teacher feedback to student achievement. A quantitative study of teacher use of the Skyward student information system (SIS) was conducted…

The teaching and learning of mathematics has been the subject of debate for over 30 years and the most recent reform efforts are in response to concerns regarding the mathematical competence of students in the United States (Ball, Hill, & Bass, 2005; Battista, 1994; Cavanagh, 2008). Standards-based Instructional Materials (SBIM) allows…

Adults are prone to treating percents, one representational format of rational numbers, as novel cases of natural number. This suggests that percent values are not differentiated from natural numbers; a conceptual shift from the natural numbers to the rational numbers has not yet occurred. This is most surprising, considering people are inundated…

Information overload is a state where information input exceeds processing capability by an individual, and adverse effects of information overload, such as becoming less productive, making bad decisions, and becoming highly selective, are growing. Guided by Glaser and Strauss' work on grounded theory, this study examined adverse impact of…

The purpose of this research was to compare the equating performance of various equating procedures for the multidimensional tests. To examine the various equating procedures, simulated data sets were used that were generated based on a multidimensional item response theory (MIRT) framework. Various equating procedures were examined, including…

We investigated students' metacognitive experiences with regard to feelings of difficulty (FD), feelings of satisfaction (FS), and estimate of effort (EE), employing either computerized adaptive testing (CAT) or computerized fixed item testing (FIT). In an experimental approach, 174 students in grades 10 to 13 were tested either with a CAT or a…

The expertise reversal effect occurs when learner's expertise moderates design principles derived from cognitive load theory. Although this effect is supported by numerous empirical studies, indicating an overall large effect size, the effect was never tested by inducing expertise experimentally and using instructional explanations in a…

Argumentation can contribute significantly to content area learning. Recent research has raised questions about the effects of discussion (deliberation) goals versus persuasion (disputation) goals on reasoning and learning. This is the first study to compare the effects of these writing goals on individual writing to learn. Grade 7 and 8 students…

Background/Context: Despite decades of research, the persistence of the gap in student achievement between disadvantaged minority students and their middle-class peers remains unexplained. Purpose/Objective: The purpose of the current article is to propose a new model of the achievement gap. Research Design: Data were analyzed from three…

This study reports 2 eye-tracking experiments investigating form interference during sentence-level silent reading. The items involved reduced and unreduced relative clauses (RCs) with words that were orthographically and phonologically similar "(injection-infection"; O+P+, Experiment 1) as well as with words that were orthographically…

This study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of training tutors in content knowledge of a particular domain versus training them in tutoring skills of pedagogical knowledge when tutoring on a complex tutee task. Forty-seven tutor--tutee pairs of fourth-year secondary school students were created and assigned to one of the two treatments.…

The "Diplôme d'études de langue française" (DELF) has recently gained attention in Canada for its potential as a national French second language (FSL) proficiency test. This article explores the perceptions of students, teachers, and parents in various school jurisdictions across Canada on a range of issues related to the DELF test and…