Design research studies provide significant opportunities to study new innovations and approaches and how they affect the forms of learning in complex classroom ecologies. This paper reports on a two-week long design research study with twelve 2nd through 4th graders using curricular materials and a tablet-based diagnostic assessment system, both…

We evaluated the effectiveness of two alternative middle-school science curriculum sequences, namely, a general science model and a topic-specific model (i.e., physics, chemistry, etc.). We also investigated the differential effectiveness of the alternative sequences for two ethnic groups. The sample consisted of 367 grade 8 science students from…

The study of functions is a critical route into teaching and learning algebra in the elementary grades, yet important questions remain regarding the nature of young children's understanding of functions. This article reports an empirically developed learning trajectory in first-grade children's (6-year-olds') thinking about generalizing functional…

This review investigates effective interventions for teaching algebra to students with learning disabilities and evaluates the complexity and alignment of skills with the Common Core State Standards in math. The review includes the results of 10 experimental and 5 single-subject designs (N = 15) producing a moderate overall effect size (g = 0.48).…

The aim of this paper is to examine the effects of sequencing instructional materials and learners' prior knowledge on learning ESL (English as a second language) through an online learning course. 121 fifth-grade students from an elementary school in Korea participated in the study. Each participant was allocated to one cell of a 2 × 2…

Being adaptive to the individual novice teacher is considered a condition for effective teacher mentoring. The aims of this study are therefore to explore (1) mentoring activities through which mentors intend to adapt to the individual novice teacher and (2) characteristics of adaptive mentors. Information was collected through on-site,…

A course design question for self-paced courses includes whether or not technological measures should be used in course design to force students to follow the sequence intended by the course author. This study examined learner behavior to understand whether the sequence of student assignment submissions in a self-paced distance course is related…

Learning to write well is a significant outcome of higher education, as confirmed and illustrated in the Written Communication VALUE Rubric of the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U). Scholars agree that writing and thinking are linked. Thinking about this relationship between writing and thinking in the context of…

The Objective Structured Clinical Exam (OSCE) is a widely used method of assessment in medical education. Rater cognition has become an important area of inquiry in the medical education assessment literature generally, and in the OSCE literature specifically, because of concerns about potential compromises of validity. In this study, a novel…

The study presented in this article aims to explore if and how intercultural learning may take place in students' class interaction. It is grounded in the assumption that interculturality is not a clear-cut feature inherent to interactions occurring when individuals with presumed different linguistic and cultural/national backgrounds talk to each…

In mathematics education, there is a continuing debate about the nature of mathematics, which some claim to be an objective science, whereas others note its socially and individually constructed nature. From a strict cultural-historical perspective, the objective and subjective sides of mathematics are but manifestations of a higher-order…

This paper discusses how implementation of Lesson Study (LS) has brought about evolving changes in the quality of mathematics classroom teaching in one Chinese primary school. The Japanese model of LS was adapted as a teacher professional development to improve mathematics teachers' teaching practices. The LS group consisted of five mathematics…

This study tested the predictions of the procedural deficit hypothesis by investigating the relationship between sequential statistical learning and two aspects of lexical ability, lexical-phonological and lexical-semantic, in children with and without specific language impairment (SLI). Participants included forty children (ages 8;5-12;3), twenty…

This paper reports on a study that investigated the ways that young children interact with discrete programmable digital toys in a free play setting. One intention was to see whether this interaction would address some of the requirements of the Digital Technologies subject in the Australian Curriculum. The study was implemented in two phases in…

Task interspersal is an academic material modification procedure implemented by adding a sequence of brief tasks prior to more difficult academic tasks. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of the interspersal procedure under both time-based (i.e., time allotted to complete task held constant) and task-based (i.e., number of…