We investigated whether memory for scientific arguments and their sources were affected by the appropriateness of the claim-evidence relationship. Undergraduates read health articles in one of four conditions derived by crossing claim type (causal with definite qualifier, associative with tentative qualifier) and evidence type (experimental,…

To improve on the classic school trip to the museum and the traditional distinctions between formal and informal learning, every year we run a project where the schools (first the teachers and then the pupils) are actively involved right from the very first stages of planning. The various projects realised so far involve schools with children of…

This study characterises the links between research and practice across 12 projects concerned with the collaborative design of lesson plans by teacher communities (TCs). Analyses focused on sources of knowledge used to inform lesson design, participants' roles and knowledge generated by the teacher community. Three patterns emerged pertaining…

This longitudinal study investigates the journal selections of 367 graduate students as they worked to fulfill a commonly assigned, criteria-based literature search on educational topics. The criteria called for evidence-based studies, published within the current ten years of course enrollment, within peer-reviewed journals. Student references…

The growing importance of the Internet in our society requires that university graduates be skilled in critical evaluation of the messages and sources present in the online world. Traditional efforts to teach these skills have relied on specific, checklist-like tools; recently, these approaches have rightly come under criticism for being…

This document covers the data terms used in publications sourced from the National VET Provider Collection and their associated data tables. The primary purpose of this document is to assist users of the publication to understand the specific data terms used within them. Terms that appear in the publications and data items are listed in…

The value of using social media is being increasingly recognised among the academic community. Blogging has been identified by some researchers as a means of reaching a non-academic audience and in order to increase research citations. However, there is little research exploring this method of communication within specific disciplines. This study,…

The objective of this commentary is to call attention to the feasibility and importance of large-scale, systematic, quantitative analysis in international and comparative education research. We contend that although many existing databases are under- or unutilized in quantitative international-comparative research, these resources present the…

Using administrative sources in the history of education and childhood involves a range of methodological and ethical considerations. This article discusses these problems, as well as the role of archives and archival policies in preserving history and shaping our understanding of past childhoods. Using Finnish child welfare archives from the…

A refutation text is designed to promote conceptual change by explicitly acknowledging commonly held misconceptions about a topic, directly refuting them, and providing an accurate explanation. In this study, we determined the impact of different types of refutation texts on adolescent readers' conceptual change learning in science. Specifically,…

Background: By March 2014, all U.S. citizens were required to have health insurance according to the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Purpose: Study objectives were to explore individuals' opinions, perceptions, and communication sources and needs about the ACA and to assess differences by age group. Methods: In November 2013, 10 1-hour focus groups (5…

Scientifically literate citizens are able to evaluate news reports on everyday problems with a critical stance to information, which means using both value and norm-based as well as evidence and logic based thinking. Developing a critical stance towards information in the news media, requires familiarity with a complex set of interdisciplinary…

The dissemination and control of information are indispensable ingredients of violent conflict, with all parties involved in a conflict or at war seeking to frame the discussion on their own terms. Those attempts at information control often involve the dissemination of misinformation or disinformation (i.e., information that is incorrect by…

Mentalizing is an aspect of social cognition that is garnering increased interest. Although a wide variety of experimental tasks are available to measure mentalizing abilities in adults, the most widely used tasks typically focus on specific aspects of mentalizing, and mentalizing judgments are performed based on a limited set of information about…

This article presents the results of the first Canada-wide survey on how university admissions personnel view the International Baccalaureate Diploma Program (IBDP) in relation to other curricula. The purpose of this study was twofold: (i) to move beyond anecdote and discover how Canada compares with universities in the UK and Australia/NZ, and…