The evidence of the huge challenges of literacy development faced by South African learners is primarily gleaned from the results of learners' external assessments. There is little research which explores, in-depth, the strategies used by teachers to teach reading literacy and reading comprehension specifically. Questions remain about what is…

As business e-mail volumes continue to grow and employees spend increasingly larger portions of their day processing e-mail, there is strong evidence of the negative impacts of e-mail processing, especially with respect to e-mail overload. This study sought to determine whether a training program focused on select e-mail features and processing…

Seven excerpts of modern jazz piano improvisations were selected to represent a range of perceived complexities. Audio recordings of the excerpts were played for 27 listeners who were asked to indicate their level of enjoyment on 7-point scales. Indications of enjoyment followed an inverted-U when plotted against perceived complexity of the music.…

The concept of focus on form has been influential in second language (L2) acquisition and pedagogy. One example of the implementation of focus on form is a post-task activity (e.g., anticipation of a public performance) that can selectively orient learners toward increased levels of accuracy. The present research proposes a new operationalization…

Assessment has become a popular buzzword on academic campuses over the last few decades. Most assessment models are designed to evaluate traditional learning structures. If we were to state simply the process of assessment, it might read like this: (1) what you want the students to learn; (2) how you want to teach the material; and (3) how you…

Struggling learners and students with Learning Disabilities often exhibit unique cognitive processing and working memory characteristics that may not align with instructional design principles developed with typically developing learners. This paper explains the Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning and underlying Cognitive Load Theory, and…

Promoting mathematical creativity is one of the aims of mathematics education. This study investigates the tasks teachers chose when their aim was to occasion mathematical creativity in the classroom. Five cases are described in depth, and general trends found among these cases as well as in additional data are discussed. Findings indicated that…

Eleven typically developing children were assessed on the accuracy of prompted self-echoic responses following a 5-s delay from their initial echoic response, replicating procedures in Esch, Esch, McCart, and Petursdottir (2010) that compared discrepancies between echoic and self-echoic scores of autistic and typically developing children…

Although schoolchildren in India perform poorly in reading/writing tests, little attention is paid to early literacy instruction. This article describes literacy instruction in an English-medium school; through classroom observations and children's artifacts, it documents what four children in Lower KG understand about literacy in English, a…

Purpose: In this study, the authors examined the role of syllabic structure in nonword repetition performance in typically developing (TD) children and children with specific language impairment (SLI). Method: Eighteen children with SLI (5;7--6;7 [years;months]) and 18 TD children matched for chronological age were tested on their ability to…

Untimed examinations are popular with students because there is a perception that first impressions may be incorrect, and that difficult questions require more time for reflection. In this report, we tested the hypothesis that timed anatomy practical examinations are inherently more difficult than untimed examinations. Students in the Doctor of…

One perspective of cognitive rigor is the extent to which classroom instruction demands students to use critical thinking skills. As schools attempt to increase academic outcomes, one area of interest is the potential for engaging students in learning by increasing the use of critical thinking. The present study analyses the effect of critical…

Teaching object-oriented programming (OOP) is a difficult task, especially to the beginners. First-time learners also find it difficult to understand. Although there is a considerable amount of study on the cognitive dimension, a few study points out its physiological meaning. Moreover, it has been suggested that neuroscientific studies and…

A primary goal of standards-based statewide achievement tests is to classify students into achievement levels that enable valid inferences about student content area knowledge and skill. Explicating how knowledge and skills are expected to differ in complexity in achievement level descriptors, and how that complexity is related to empirical item…

Evidence-centered design (ECD) is an orientation towards assessment development. It differs from conventional practice in several ways and consists of multiple activities. Each of these activities results in a set of useful documentation: domain analysis, domain modeling, construction of the assessment framework, and assessment…