Confrontation with a mathematical task causes a student to focus initial attention upon particular content and context cues based upon that student's belief system; the student assigns subsequent meaning to that task based upon previous mathematical experience and knowledge. In order to make effective use of students' belief systems, educators…

A practicum was designed to improve reading comprehension of 10 basic skills college students by providing training using 5 specific strategies and techniques. Five specific strategies based on a review of the literature were selected: (1) metacognitive awareness; (2) discussion; (3) self-monitoring charts; (4) use of pictures as an introduction…

This paper reviewed literature on cognition to help art teachers understand what they can learn from the huge body of literature that has been generated by cognitive psychologists. It is argued that, in this information society, teaching memorization skills is not enough; students must learn problem-solving skills. A long list of specific thinking…

When students are learning to write, one-to-one teacher-student conversations taking place around the students' writing and writing processes are especially important. Two examples illustrate the multiple and connected processes of reading and writing that are associated with composing in a high school English class. The first conversation, in a…

This report proposes a design for teacher training, and for research and development in teaching and learning, that seeks to capitalize on the diversity and adaptivity of teaching and learning in the real world. Chapter I provides an overview of teacher education in the context of educational concerns at large. It discusses the processes of…

Use of metacognitive strategies, creative problem solving, and creative thinking techniques in intermediate grade writing instruction can promote students' thinking and creativity. Metacognitive strategies can help students attack the writing task in an orderly fashion. Answering specific questions for descriptive, expository, narrative, or…

A study tested the effects of between-channel redundancy on television news learning. Redundancy, defined as shared information, was proposed as an explanatory variable that considers the relationship between information in three channels: the audio, the nonverbal pictorial, and visual-verbal print channel. It was hypothesized that pictures would…

Over 1,000 eighth grade students participated in a study to determine the relationships between learning style and reading/language arts skills as demonstrated by standardized testing. It was hypothesized that (1) individual learning style contributes significantly to reading and communication skills, (2) specific learning style elements acting…

One hundred seventy-one middle school students participated in a study to assess cognitive activity during television viewing. Students completed a questionnaire about their favorite programs, viewing habits, and social reality beliefs, then viewed a 17-minute professionally edited episode of a family drama and answered a multiple choice…

Generalizations arising from effective teaching studies are vulnerable because they are not based on a theoretical perspective of how learning occurs or can be improved, but have resulted from observations of what teachers appear to be doing when students are learning. Critics of teacher effectiveness studies contend that good instruction requires…

Introduction: Information literacy education is central for students as a building block for functioning citizenship in an information rich world. To support students' development of information skills we need an awareness of underlying factors behind information seeking habits. This article will discuss whether differences in middle and high…

Proceedings of a conference on educational assessment are presented. A speech accompanying presentations of the 1987 Educational Testing Service Award for Distinguished Service to Measurement and a list of winners of that annual award from 1970 to 1987 are included. The nine papers provided include: (1) "How Assessment Can Best Serve Teaching and…

The relatively long-term effects of temperament on classroom achievement were studied in a cohort of elementary students while accounting for variation in cognitive ability, previous achievement, and gender. The existence of long-term effects would support the hypothesis that indirect genetic effects on learning are mediated by temperament.…

English education continues to be threatened by standards for research, measurement, and evaluation that ignore the nature of the discipline and devalue teachers' practices. The dominant models for assessing the effectiveness of English teachers reflect assumptions taken from quantitative social sciences or, in the case of models of…

Ongoing work toward developing a learning environment that will perform real-time diagnoses of students' difficulties in solving mathematical word problems is described. The learning environment designed consists of a microworld and expert modules. The microworld (or toolbox) is a collection of mouse-driven interfaces that facilitate a transition…