This six-day research project examined the potential for how trade books and primary sources can be used in concert with each other to develop middle school students' disciplinary thinking skills in the manners advocated for in the C3 Framework. The project was focused on the trade book "Thurgood," a picture book biography about Supreme…

Students with learning disabilities (LD) in reading often struggle to succeed due to difficulties with reading comprehension. Comprehension difficulties can impact access to a variety of text types, including informational texts. Researchers suggest that students with LD in reading require explicit comprehension supports before, during, and after…

In the context of China's social transformation and educational reform, addressing the problems of fragmented and ineffective learning in traditional teaching modes and enhancing students' academic levels and developing their comprehensive abilities through structured classroom learning have become critical issues in educational reform. The…

Does the specific structure of advance organizers influence learning outcomes? In the first experiment, 48 psychology students were randomly assigned to three differently structured advance organizers: a well-structured, a well-structured and key-concept emphasizing, and a less structured advance organizer. These were followed by a sorting task, a…

The study compared participant comprehension of foreign language video content using two advance organizer (AO) strategies while exploring the benefits of AOs as proficiency increases. Participants were 50 advanced-beginner Spanish college students in three sections. Collaborative reading condition participants read a target language narrative…

This article reports on a design study aimed at achieving that students experience their learning as meaningful. Two conditions for meaningful activities were identified: (1) students should be motivated to attain a certain goal and (2) they should have rudimentary conceptual and procedural knowledge of how to attain that goal. Together, these…

Although the school assessment context in England relies heavily on externally imposed forms of testing, it also takes many different forms, including the use of examinations with pre-release materials. These examinations allow teachers and students early access to materials that will be used during assessments at a later date. This project uses a…

This study investigated the effect of using advance organizers on students' motivation to learn biology. The research design used was quasi-experimental design where the non-randomised Solomon Four group was adopted. The focus was on the topic pollution. The sample comprised of 166 form three (third grade in the secondary school cycle) students in…

According to research in educational psychology, advance organizers lead to better learning and recall of information. In this research, the authors explored advance organizers from a business perspective, where larger documents are read under time pressure. Graphic and verbal advance organizers were manipulated into six versions of an advisory…

This study has reviewed major design approaches for electronic performance support systems and identified two common problems: users' inability to comprehend screen-based material and poorly designed instructional scaffolds. This paper presents a design approach, called the "Matrix-Aided Performance System" ("MAPS"), which enables these problems…

Advance organizers activate the most suitable schema to learn new material. Poetic images are signified in schemata and the elements which are not expressed may be called by advance organizers. The purpose of this investigation is to discern the effectiveness of advance organizers on the signification of poetic images. Pretest-posttest…

A short, intensive orientation program offered to a small group of students before the start of their first computer science course taught a simple programing language and provided pre-programing skills. The orientation was found to be beneficial, particularly for women, for both content and social orientation. (MSE)

Investigates the impact of underlining and adjunct questioning in text recall for fifth grade students. Results suggest that for 10 year-old readers adjunct post questions and underlining may hinder performance. (RAO)

Responding to the call for more research on the practice of evaluation and its link to theory, this article uses the interviews conducted with exemplary evaluators or exemplars in the "American Journal of Evaluation" as cases to describe and analyze the practice of exemplary evaluators. Dimensions of analysis included context, purpose, advance…

A study of university nursing students tested the effect of computer conference designs and advance organizers on critical thinking skills. Critical thinking, although not significantly different between three conference groups, was evident for groups in all three conference designs. Those conferences designed to facilitate critical inquiry showed…