To better understand the role that ways of reasoning play in students' success on integer addition and subtraction problems, we examined the relationship between students' flexible use of ways of reasoning and their performance on integers open number sentences. Within groups of students in 3 participant groups--39 2nd and 4th graders who had…

Twelve seventh grade and 23 eleventh grade students participated in a study that investigated age differences in the use of discourse planning. Subjects were given a list of games and asked to indicate which they knew well enough to explain to a peer. Subjects acting as speakers were seated at a table with a tape recorder present. Half had a…

Over the past 10 years, numerous empirical investigations of learning in physics have been carried out at the Institute of Physics Education (IPE) at the University of Bremen in Germany. The objectives of these investigations were: (1) to describe in detail individual learning processes; (2) to construct theoretical principles of individual…

Descriptive data were collected from male and female students in grades 7, 9, and 11 on five learner attributes commonly reported as influencing student learning and/or motivation: desire for approval of others, attribution of success or failure, desire for challenge in academic settings, perceived self-competence in school settings, and locus of…

This study represents the first to empirically validate the structure of social self-concept (SC) as proposed by the Shavelson model. For each of three age groups--preadolescents (252 3rd graders), early adolescents (290 7th graders), and late adolescents (335 11th graders)--analyses of covariance structures were used to test: (1) that social SC…

Students' reported reasons for academic success or failure (categorized as ability, effort, task difficulty, or luck) were studied simultaneously in over 1,000 students in grades 4, 8, and 11. Differences between 16 attributional groups (4 success x 4 failure) were reported by discriminant analysis, according to grade, sex, and ethnic…

The Illinois Inventory of Educational Progress (IIEP) Test Comfort Scale was administered and test results were studied in terms of student achievement and correlates of achievement. Using the revised, seven-item scale, it was determined that: in grade 4, there was no main significant effect for sex or ethnic differences, although Orientals and…

In 1983-84, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) administered a 15-task writing assessment in grades 4, 8, and 11. The tasks involved informative, persuasive, and imaginative writing, and were evaluated at one of four levels of success: unsatisfactory; rudimentary or minimal performance; satisfactory; or detailed and controlled…

Over a period of about 3 years, 3204 students in Grades 4 to 10 completed 9862 tests to identify and track their interpretation of decimal notation. Analysis of the longitudinal data demonstrates that different misconceptions persist among students to different degrees and in different patterns across the grades. Estimating the prevalence of…

Two naturalistic research studies observed 45 eleventh grade students carrying out research paper assignments, and a third such study focused on 26 third grade students. The studies took place in Alberta (Canada) in 1993, Texas in 1996, and Washington state in 1999. From data analyzed in the interviews and written documents, the initial findings…