Many college students struggle with first-semester general chemistry. Prior studies have shown that a student's prior knowledge of chemistry, a cognitive factor, does not account for the total variance when measured by examination scores. This study explored the role of self-regulated learning (SRL) to identify the degree of success or failure of…

Purpose: This paper aims to describe a method of teaching that is based on Novak's concept-mapping technique. Design/methodology/approach: The paper shows how concept mapping can be used to measure prior knowledge and how simple mapping exercises can promote the integration of teachers' and students' understandings in ways that are meaningful.…

People sometimes forget a name or a word, and are plagued by the feeling that the sought-for word is somewhere in memory but not immediately available. The frequent description of this tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) phenomenon as subthreshold memory traces is challenged by data showing that TOT genesis and TOT recovery are distinct processes. In a verbal…

Although research over the past 20 years has examined the dynamics of student learning, most initial studies focused on how scholastic aptitude tests and teacher rating scales predicted academic success. This study attempts to determine the relationship between scholastic aptitude and three approaches to learning: (1) presage; (2) process; and (3)…

Responds individually to Shoenfeld's objections that Ohlsson, Ernst, and Rees' model is unclear; that the hypotheses about learning are unjustified; that the models have not been tested against extant data; and that it is unclear whom the model models. (MDH)