Could the research you read be fundamentally flawed? Could critical defects in methodology slip by you undetected? To become informed consumers of research, students need to thoughtfully evaluate the research they read rather than accept it without question. This second edition of a classic text gives students the tools they need to apply critical…

These two studies explored 3- and 5-year-olds' evaluation of noncircular and circular explanations, and their use of such explanations to determine informant credibility. Although 5-year-olds demonstrated a selective preference for noncircular over circular explanations (Experiment 1: Long Explanations; Experiment 2: Short Explanations),…

Much has been said in literature about the changing face of development and the changing face of the aid industry. However, the focus of this article is the effect that this could have on evaluation and what might be done to move evaluation into the most useful space possible. Herein, the author makes the case that the evaluation community needs…

In a series of 3 experiments, the authors investigated the influence of symmetry of variables on children's and adults' data interpretation. They hypothesized that symmetrical (i.e., present/present) variables would support correct interpretations more than asymmetrical (i.e., present/absent) variables. Participants were asked to judge covariation…

What influences children's normative judgments of conventional rules at different points in development? The current study explored the effects of two contextual factors on children's normative reasoning: the way in which the rules were learned and whether the rules apply to the self or others. Peer dyads practiced a novel collaborative board game…

It is argued that causal understanding originates in experiences of acting on objects. Such experiences have consistent features that can be used as clues to causal identification and judgment. These are singular clues, meaning that they can be detected in single instances. A catalog of 14 singular clues is proposed. The clues function as…

In this article, the author discusses a graphic narrative or comic book writing assignment in greater detail to demonstrate the pedagogical benefits of teaching comics in the writing classroom. She argues that by assigning students a comic book project, writing instructors can promote competence in academic discourse by helping students learn and…

Educational literature has tended to focus, explicitly and implicitly, on two kinds of task orientation: the ability either to focus on a single task, or to multi-task. A third form of orientation characterises many highly successful people. This is the ability to combine several tasks into one: to "kill two (or more) birds with one…

It is impossible to perceive who owns an object; this must be inferred. One way that children make such inferences is through a first possession bias--when two agents each use an object, children judge the object belongs to the one who used it first. Two experiments show that this bias does not result from children directly inferring ownership…

We investigated the use of adaptive comparative judgment to evaluate the middle school student learning, engagement, and experience with the design process in an open-ended problem assigned in a technology and engineering education course. Our results indicate that the adaptive comparative judgment tool effectively facilitated the grading of the…

The task of turning undergrads into academics requires teaching them to reason about the world in a more complex way. We present the Argument Complexity Scale, a tool for analysing the complexity of argumentation, based on the Integrative Complexity and Conceptual Complexity Scales from, respectively, political psychology and personality theory.…

In an attempt to better understand the role of relationship between the use of English indefinite article and L1 transfer in L2 countability judgments by speakers of non-classifier languages, the current study investigates how Saudi EFL learners judge noun countability in English. The current study aims to find; (1) if countability judgments…

What should activist-scholars teach in the social problems classroom? In this conversation, I challenge the assertion that advancing a sociology of social problems is an overly academic enterprise of little use to students and other publics. I introduce the potential of a pedagogical framework for promoting social problems literacy: a set of…

Justification and argumentation have been identified as important mathematical practices; however, little work has been done to understand the knowledge and pedagogy teachers need to support students in these ambitious practices. Data for this research was drawn from the "Justification and Argumentation: Growing Understanding in Algebraic…

This paper outlines how examining student teachers' perceptions of the use of seminars in HE led to reflections about the role and significance of seminars in initial teacher education (ITE). Whilst the generic literature on student learning provides useful insights about how they approach their learning and tutors' teaching strategies, we know…