Instructional reforms are essentially worthwhile as they help students improve their reading from 13th percentile to the 25th or 34th percentile. Only with an expansion of expert tutoring, the goal of all students reading on grade level can be achieved.

This article explores conditions for discussing what it means to be professional among teachers, pre-school teachers, nurses, and social workers. From an epistemological point of view it explores how analytical strategies can frame in sufficiently complex ways what it means to be a professional today. It is assumed that at least four main issues…

A typical tutorial system functions by means of interaction between four components: the expert knowledge base component, the inference engine component, the learner's knowledge component and the user interface component. In typical tutorial systems the interaction and the sequence of presentation as well as the mode of evaluation are…

An experiment was conducted in the context of a problem-based learning course to investigate the influence of a learning-goal-free problem scenario on the quality and quantity of individual study. In half of the tutorial groups, the problem scenario was constructed in such a way that it provided useful learning issues (goal-specified condition),…

In this article, the author relates her experiences during her new-coaches training week in Critical Friends Group. The author relates that there was little coordination and camaraderie among the participants during the first day of the training but during the succeeding days, a group identity began to form. The author relates that the new-coaches…

One of the most striking developments in Italian higher education in recent years has been the growth of commercial tutoring schools, which help college students prepare for the oral examinations on which their grades are based. By far the largest of such schools, the European Center for University Preparation, known by its Italian abbreviation,…

The purpose of this qualitative case study was to understand how students' involvement in TRIO Upward Bound and Student Support Services has affected their decision to persist in obtaining a postsecondary degree. The overall aim in the study was to explore critical influences on the student's participation in these services, particularly those…

Schools that have not made adequate yearly progress in increasing student academic achievement are required, under No Child Left Behind (NCLB), to offer children in low-income families the opportunity to receive supplemental educational services (SES). In research conducted in Milwaukee Public Schools, the authors explore whether parents and…

Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITSs) that employ a model-tracing methodology have consistently shown their effectiveness. However, what evidently makes these tutors effective, the cognitive model embedded within them, has traditionally been difficult to create, requiring great expertise and time, both of which come at a cost. Furthermore, an…

Today's technology-enhanced learning practices cater to students and teachers who use many different learning tools and environments and are used to a paradigm of interaction derived from open, ubiquitous, and socially oriented services. In this context, a crucial issue for education systems in general, and for Intelligent Learning Environments…

This case study reports on the progress of Navon, a 13-year-old boy with prelingual deafness, over a 3-month period following exposure to Logo, a computer programming language that visualizes specific programming commands by means of a virtual drawing tool called the Turtle. Despite an almost complete lack of skills in spoken and sign language,…

We describe a computer assisted language learning (CALL) system that uses human-machine dialogue as its medium of interaction. The system was developed to help students learn the basics of the Maori language and was designed to accompany the introductory course in Maori running at the University of Otago. The student engages in a task-based…

Ever since the PLATO system of the 1960's, CALL (computer assisted language learning) has had a major focus on providing self-paced, auto-correcting exercises for language learners to practice their skills and improve their knowledge of discrete areas of language learning. The computer has been recognized from the beginning as a patient and…

The present study assessed the effects of summer parent tutoring on 3 children with learning disabilities using empirically derived reading interventions. Brief experimental analyses were used to identify customized reading fluency interventions. Parents were trained to use the intervention strategies with their children. Parents implemented the…

Prior research has established that peer tutors can benefit academically from their tutoring experiences. However, although tutor learning has been observed across diverse settings, the magnitude of these gains is often underwhelming. In this review, the authors consider how analyses of tutors' actual behaviors may help to account for variation in…