This paper explores an innovative approach to evaluating the effectiveness of a writing group in an Australian research-intensive university. Traditional qualitative and quantitative methods typically applied in higher-education research may be effective in analysing the output of writing groups; however, they do not always address the affective…

We report on our development of an educational social machine based on the concept that feedback in communities is an effective means to support the development of communities of learning and practice. Key challenges faced by this work are how best to support educational and social interactions, how to deliver personalised tuition, and how to…

In this interpretative case study, the researcher examined the beliefs and practices of three social studies teachers related to their teaching of race in U.S. history at a racially and ethnically diverse urban high school. Using the theory of culturally relevant pedagogy as a lens, this study employed mixed methods, analyzing teacher interviews,…

The purpose of this article is to analyze the perspectives of doctoral students on creativity and learning in the virtual environment. The researchers investigated the following central research question: to what extent is creative thinking fostered in virtual environments? In addition, the paper also examined how creativity is practiced in…

In this paper we report on a small-scale comparative examination of prospective elementary teachers' beliefs about problem-solving in Cyprus and England. First year undergraduate students (13 from Cyprus and 14 from England) from a well-regarded university in each country were qualitatively interviewed at the commencement of their respective…

In this article, the author analyses scripts written by incarcerated girls in playwriting and performance workshops conducted in regional youth detention centres and performed by formerly incarcerated girls in a programme called "Girl Time" in an urban American southeastern city. Through a close reading and analysis of characters, plots…

This study examines a major linguistic event underway in New York City. Of its 10 million inhabitants, nearly a third are speakers of Spanish. This community is socially and linguistically diverse: Some speakers are recent arrivals from Latin America while others are lifelong New Yorkers. Some have origins in the Caribbean, the historic source of…

The context for this work is two-agent team decision systems. An "agent" is an intelligent entity that can measure some aspect of its environment, process information and possibly influence the environment through its action. In a collaborative two-agent team decision system, the agents can be coupled by noisy or noiseless interactions…

Librarians are familiar with the single-line form, the consolidated index, which represents a very large portion of a library's print and online collection. Their end users are familiar with the idea of a single search across a comprehensive index that produces a large, relevancy-ranked results list. Even though most patrons would not recognize…

A high proportion of PhD candidates in science and engineering fail to complete their degrees. This paper reports the results of a series of workshops where experienced researchers and supervisors were brought together with PhD students to discuss and develop a model of the PhD process. The objective was to help students develop a more rounded and…

Memory improves when encoding and retrieval processes overlap. Here, we investigated how the neural bases of long-term memory encoding vary as a function of the degree to which functional processes engaged at study are engaged again at test. In an incidental learning paradigm, electrical brain activity was recorded from the scalps of healthy…

Digital flashcards are one of the most popular self-study computer-assisted vocabulary learning tools for beginners of Chinese as a foreign language. However, studies on the effects of this widely used learning tool are scarce. Introducing a new concept--referential stimulus--into the Dual Coding Theory (DCT) framework, this study acknowledges the…

Objective: The study focused on children's nonverbal behavior in investigative interviews exploring suspicions of child abuse. The key aims were to determine whether non-verbal behavior in the pre-substantive phases of the interview predicted whether or not children would disclose the alleged abuse later in the interview and to identify…

This study examines whether positively biased self-perceptions relate to social behaviors in children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) as compared to control children. The social behaviors of children with ADHD (n = 87) were examined relative to control children (CTL; n = 38) during a laboratory-based dyadic social interaction…

Some memories about events can persist for decades, even a lifetime. However, recent memories incorporate rich sensory information, including knowledge on the spatial and temporal ordering of event features, while old memories typically lack this "filmic" quality. We suggest that this apparent change in the nature of memories may reflect a…