Previous research suggests that activating background knowledge immediately prior to read-alouds in Kindergarten is an important strategy for improving children's learning (e.g. Cervetti & Hiebert, 2015). But, because children's background knowledge varies considerably at the individual level, teachers are also often providing relevant…

The article focuses on defining how background knowledge impacts on second-language acquisition by giving a brief overview of schema theory, the interaction of the basic modes of information processing. A challenge of dealing with culturally specific texts in second language acquisition is also touched upon. Different research-supported views on…

This paper discusses the recent rise in teacher recruitment problems in England and examines possible causes. These are varied, but a main cause appears to be the increased variety of programmes on offer, which, it appears, is confusing applicants. Three different programme's trainees were asked to complete questionnaires at the start of their…

Making one's own learning choices is central to self-directed learning, yet the opportunity to choose learning activities is rarely given to students in formal educational settings. The case study reported in this paper is a description of student experiences and perceptions in a software tools graduate level class that offered substantial…

Studied prior knowledge as a mediator of effectiveness of the elaborative interrogation strategy for 50 male and 50 female undergraduates in a learning task. The elaborative interpretation group had significantly greater matching scores on an associative memory test for animal information than the control group only for familiar animals. (SLD)