Criteria for evaluating school choice mechanisms are first, whether truth-telling is sometimes punished and second, how efficient the match is. With common knowledge preferences, Deferred Acceptance (DA) dominates the Boston mechanism by the first criterion and is ambiguously ranked by the second. Our laboratory experiments confirm this. A new ex…

Learning science requires the understanding of concepts and formal relationships, processes that--in themselves--have been proved to be difficult for students as they seem to encounter substantial problems with most of the inquiry-learning processes in which they engage. Models in inquiry-based learning have been considered as powerful…

This study assessed whether and how self-explanation reading training, provided by iSTART (Interactive Strategy Training for Active Reading and Thinking), improves the effectiveness of comprehension processes. iSTART teaches students how to self-explain and which strategies will most effectively aid comprehension from moment-to-moment. We used…

A new procedure for performing quantitative measurements in teaching optics is presented. Application of the procedure to accurately measure the rate of change of the variable refractive index of a water-denatured alcohol mixture is described. The procedure can also be usefully exploited for measuring the constant refractive index of distilled…

One of the characteristics of teaching chemistry through inquiry is that teachers need to encourage students to design their experimental procedures. Although the benefits of inquiry teaching are well documented in the literature, few teachers implement it in schools. The purpose of this study was to develop a guided-inquiry scale (GIS) to measure…

This book brings together academics and postgraduate students, practitioners and Ministry officials all of whom are wedded to developing an understanding of what is happening to education in the broader Middle East. They cover many countries whilst recognising that many more could have been included. In drawing attention to education in Pakistan,…

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether conceptual change texts and laboratory experiments are effective in overcoming misconceptions and whether the concepts were acquired permanently when these methods were utilized. In this study, we addressed some topics from the "Matter and Change" unit in science and technology class of…

This study examined the influence of virtual manipulatives on different achievement groups during a teaching experiment in four fifth-grade classrooms. During a two-week unit focusing on two rational number concepts (fraction equivalence and fraction addition with unlike denominators) one low achieving, two average achieving, and one high…

This publication contains 12 (A3 open-out) poster-style reports of teacher experimental research. The style of presentation parallels the type of preliminary reporting common at academic conferences and postgraduate events. At the same time, it aims to act as a form of short primer to introduce teachers to the basic options that there are when…

In order to unify two major theories of moral judgment, a novel task is employed which combines elements of Kohlberg's stage theory and of the theory of information integration. In contrast to the format of Kohlberg's moral judgment interview, a nonverbal and quantitative response which makes low demands on verbal facility was used. Moral…

How do concrete objects that cue real-world knowledge affect students' performance on mathematics word problems? In Experiment 1, fourth- and sixth-grade students (N = 229) solved word problems involving money. Students in the experimental condition were given bills and coins to help them solve the problems, and students in the control condition…

This research, carried out in Greece on pupils aged 12-16, focuses on the transformation of their representations concerning light emission and image formation by extended light sources. The instructive process was carried out in two stages, each one having a different, distinct target set. During the first stage, the appropriate conflict…

The authors' purpose was to study the efficacy of patterning instruction in improving the reading and mathematics proficiency of first grade children. Patterning instruction was compared to equal time and effort spent on instruction on reading or mathematics or social studies, which are control conditions in this experiment. The question for…

Differentiated instruction is commonly believed to be critical to improving the quality and efficiency of teachers' instructional repertoires (Fischer & Rose, 2001; Tomlinson, 2004). Tomlinson (2000) describes differentiation in four domains: content, process, product, and learning environment. Content differentiation involves varying…

Assigning difficulty level indicators to the knowledge units helps the learners plan their learning activities more efficiently. This paper focuses on how to use the topology of a knowledge map to compute and rank the difficulty levels of knowledge units. Firstly, the authors present the hierarchical structure and properties of the knowledge map.…