Mathematical competencies are important not only for academic achievement at school but also for professional success later in life. Although we know a lot about the impact of "Home Literacy Environment" on the development of early linguistic competencies, research on "Home Numeracy Environment" (HNE) and the assessment of its…

Researchers have consistently demonstrated that multiple examples are better than one example in facilitating learning because the comparison evoked by multiple examples supports learning and transfer. However, research outcomes are unclear regarding the effects of example variability and prior knowledge on learning from comparing multiple…

The present study investigated the differences of strategy use between low-, average-, and high-achieving students when solving different multiplication problems. Nineteen high-, 48 average-, and 17 low-achieving students participated in this study. All participants were asked to complete three different multiplication tests and to explain how…

A relatively large number of South African learners drop out of school during the last 2 years of high school. This has important negative consequences for the individual learners, as well as for the country as a whole since it contributes greatly to the high number of unskilled and unemployed people. This study was carried out to explore whether,…

The count of key words indicating the quality of reasoning has been used as a method to observe exploratory talk. However, reasoning in talk does not necessarily contain key words. The analysis of key words leaves unattended other aspects of exploratory talk, such as collaborative processes. The question is: to what extent can the analysis of key…

Recent research has found that linguistic cues may affect children's number word acquisition. Two studies were undertaken to evaluate the use of singular/plural markings and small number words in Chinese and English and its effect on children's number concepts. The first study utilized the CHILDES data and investigated how…

From an integrative approach, this work focuses on the role of conceptual mechanisms, such as comparison and conceptual-based inference, and sociopragmatic support in young children's taxonomic categorization. "Experiment 1" assessed whether 3-, 4-, and 6-year-old children succeed in detecting taxonomic relations on their own. A…

Teaching and assessing metacognitive activities are important educational objectives, and teachers are calling for efficient instruments. The advantages of questionnaires in measuring metacognitive activities are obvious, but serious validity issues appear. For example, correlations of questionnaire data with think-aloud measures are generally…

Teachers' pedagogical content beliefs about reading instruction are likely to predict progress in student achievement. Thus, in this study, 15 pre-service teachers gave reading promotion to low-performing sixth- and seventh-graders over a time period of 6 months. The pre-service teachers' pedagogical content beliefs were then related to…

Besides cognitive learning effects, short-term environmental education (EE) is often regarded as ineffective in intervening with participants' environmental attitudes and behaviour. However, in Germany, school classes often participate in such 1-day EE programmes because they better match the school curriculum in contrast to longer…

Research on expertise suggests that a critical aspect of expert understanding is knowledge of the relations between domain principles and problem features. We investigated two instructional pathways hypothesized to facilitate students' learning of these relations when studying worked examples. The first path is through self-explaining how…

The study assessed Theory of Mind (ToM) abilities in a group of oral deaf children and in their hearing mothers using a battery of ToM tasks. It also investigated the connection between mother and child in ToM performance. Participants were: 17 oral deaf children (aged 5 to 14 years) were paired by gender, age, and mental age with 17 hearing…

We assessed the learning approaches and learning styles of a sample of 148 excellent students selected from 11 degrees from nine centers of the Polytechnic University of Valencia (Spain), and we compared the results with those of a sample of 133 average students from the same centers. We found that excellent students took deeper approach than…

The aim of this study is to evaluate the differences in prosocial altruistic behavior between children and young students who belong to the scout movement and those who do not belong to this or any other similar movement. The prosocial altruistic behavior has been assessed with questionnaires for the school: self-evaluation, teacher, classmate,…

In this article, we outline the need to draw upon multiple contexts to gain meaningful understanding of factors that have a significant bearing upon student achievement motivation and engagement. In calling for theoretical approaches that can accommodate the complexities involved, we suggest that Bronfenbrenner's bioecological theory offers…