This study compared sentence comprehension skills in typically developing children 5-17 years of age, children with language impairment (LI) and children with focal brain injuries (FL) acquired in the pre/perinatal period. Participants were asked to process sentences "on-line", choosing the agent in sentences that varied in syntactic complexity…

A 2-year study at the University of Sherbrooke (Quebec) investigated the changes in six medical students' clinical reasoning processes as they participated in a problem-based learning (PBL) curriculum. In each year, students performed a think-aloud protocol with two medical case problems to solve, one in cardiology and one in urology. In the…

For each of two years, 50 Hispanic and Black eighth graders were selected for a field-based, environmental science summer program designed to nurture math and science talent and encourage bright, minority youth to persist in school. Students were selected on the basis of participation in an outreach program, essays, grades, recommendations, and an…

Non-traditional learners, adult learners who are age 21 or older, have many obstacles to overcome in their quest for knowledge. This paper investigates affective forces that influence non-traditional learners in a traditional computer lab and in a satellite-delivered instructional setting. Study participants consisted of 58 graduate and…

The purposes of this study were to: (1) investigate the process of development of young children's ideas when (and if) they appropriate science from the conceptual area (i.e., light) during whole-class and small-group interactions; and (2) advance understanding of relationships between a collaboratively designed learning and teaching model and…

Part of a larger research project, this longitudinal study analyzed differences between effective and ineffective high school and college language learners and changes in strategy uses over time. Related studies include a descriptive study, which identified learning strategies used in studying foreign languages, and a course development study, in…

The range and characteristics of learning strategies used in studying foreign languages were studied in a 3-year project involving 67 high school students of Spanish and 34 college students of Russian. This final report reviews second language acquisition theory and learning strategies, research in learning strategies, and a cognitive model of…

This paper explores the development of preservice student teachers' development of reflection, in the context of a teacher education course in which the teacher educator explicitly attempted to model reflective practice. Modeling took place through open access to the teacher educator's journal and through "thinking aloud" in class about…

This study, conducted in Singapore, was designed to determine pre-service primary teachers' (n=34) behavior in asking operational questions in science. In training the pre-service teachers in asking operational questions, the meaning of operational questions was first illustrated and clarified to them through the use of some examples during group…

By the age of 4, children typically have separate schema for relating events in the physical world and for relating events to associated mental states. Generally, these schema cannot be coordinated until around 6 years of age, when the ability to use them together yields a structure for assigning intentionality. This intentional structure develops…

This issue contains abstracts and critical comments on 11 articles, plus an editorial comment entitled "A Teacher Shortage?". Studies included concern solution processes on addition and subtraction examples; numerical rule induction; individual differences in performance on manipulative, pictorial, and symbolic tasks; the effect of a…

Twenty third-grade teachers and their low ability reading group students participated in a naturalistic study to test how teachers' explanations during a year of reading instruction affected either metacognitive awareness or student use of strategies while reading. The 10 teachers in the treatment group were trained to be explicit when teaching…

Conducted by the Council for Educational Development and Research, a national survey asked educators representing the nation's 8,889 small, rural school districts to indicate which of 40 items/issues facing rural, small schools needed improvement. The 4,364 respondents (827 school board presidents, 1,251 district superintendents, 1,283 principals,…

Six experienced teachers of fourth and fifth grades read and made judgments about the appropriateness, attractiveness, usefulness, and effectiveness of each of 32 short descriptions of language-arts activities. The activity descriptions had been edited to vary systematically on five features: amount of student involvement; difficulty for students;…

This document accompanies the Conceptual Learning and Development Assessment Series I: Equilateral Triangle, a test constructed to chart the conceptual developemnt of individuals. As a technical manual, it contains information on the rationale, development, standardization, and reliability of the test, as well as essential information and…