A comparison of single and multiple strategy instruction on third-grade students' mathematical problem solving.

The purposes of this study were to assess the differential effects of a single strategy (schema-based instruction; SBI) versus multiple strategies (general strategy instruction, GSI) in promoting mathematical problem solving and mathematics achievement as well as to examine the influence of word problem-solving instruction on the development of computational skills. Eighty-eight 3rd graders and their teachers were assigned randomly to conditions (SBI and GSI). Students were pre- and posttested on mathematical problem-solving and computation tests and were posttested on the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment Mathematics test, a criterion-referenced test that measures student attainment of academic standards. Results revealed SBI to be more effective than GSI in enhancing students' mathematical word problem-solving skills at posttest and maintenance. Further, results indicate that the SBI groups' performance exceeded that of the GSI group on the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment measure. On the computation test, both groups made gains over time. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Direct teaching, strategy instruction, and strategy instruction with explicit self-regulation: Effects on the composition skills and self-efficacy of students with learning disabilities.

Extends previous research on components of effective strategy instruction operationalized in an approach referred to as self-regulated strategy development (SRSD). Comparisons were made among learning-disabled students in 4 conditions (SRSD, SRSD without goal setting and self-monitoring, direct teaching, and practice control) at posttest, generalization, and 2 maintenance probes. Normally achieving (NA) peers constituted a social validation condition. Full SRSD resulted in significantly greater schematic structure scores at generalization as compared with the other instructional conditions. At posttest, both SRSD conditions resulted in significantly greater schematic structure scores as compared with the practice control condition. Comparisons with NA peers indicated that all instructional conditions had a meaningful effect. No differences among conditions were found for self-efficacy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Primary grade writing instruction: A national survey.

A random sample of primary grade teachers (N = 178; 97% female) from across the United States was surveyed about their classroom instructional practices in writing. Most of the participating teachers (72%) took an eclectic approach to writing instruction, combining elements from the 2 most common methods for teaching writing: process writing and skills instruction. Although 90% of the teachers reported using most of the writing instructional practices that were included in the survey, there was considerable variability between teachers in how often they used specific practices. The study provides support for the following 7 recommendations for reforming primary grade writing instruction: (a) increase amount of time students spend writing; (b) increase time spent writing expository text; (c) provide better balance between time spent writing, learning writing strategies, and teaching writing skills; (d) place more emphasis on fostering students' motivation for writing; (e) develop stronger connections for writing between home and school; (f) make computers a more integral part of the writing program; and (g) improve professional development for writing instruction in teacher education programs. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A meta-analysis of writing instruction for adolescent students.

There is considerable concern that the majority of adolescents do not develop the competence in writing they need to be successful in school, the workplace, or their personal lives. A common explanation for why youngsters do not write well is that schools do not do a good job of teaching this complex skill. In an effort to identify effective instructional practices for teaching writing to adolescents, the authors conducted a meta-analysis of the writing intervention literature (Grades 4-12), focusing their efforts on experimental and quasi-experimental studies. They located 123 documents that yielded 154 effect sizes for quality of writing. The authors calculated an average weighted effect size (presented in parentheses) for the following 11 interventions: strategy instruction (0.82), summarization (0.82), peer assistance (0.75), setting product goals (0.70), word processing (0.55), sentence combining (0.50), inquiry (0.32), prewriting activities (0.32), process writing approach (0.32), study of models (0.25), grammar instruction (- 0.32). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Explicitly teaching strategies, skills, and knowledge: Writing instruction in middle school classrooms.

Writing is a very demanding task, requiring the orchestration of a variety of cognitive resources. For developing writers, it can be especially demanding, as they have not yet mastered important writing processes, skills, and knowledge involved in planning, drafting, and revising text. In the present study, middle school students were directly taught strategies that facilitated the execution of each of these processes. They were also taught the knowledge and skills needed to carry out these strategies. In comparison to peers in the control condition, students in the experimental treatment condition produced essays that were longer, contained more mature vocabulary, and were qualitatively better. These gains were evident immediately following instruction and on a short-term maintenance probe administered 1 month later. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of Historical Reasoning Instruction and Writing Strategy Mastery in Culturally and Academically Diverse Middle School Classrooms.

Seventy 8th-grade students (including talented writers, those with average ability, and students in need of special education services) participated in an integrated social studies and language arts unit designed to promote historical understandings and argumentative writing skills. The historical reasoning instruction lasted 12 days, and the writing instruction lasted 10 days. Students applied historical inquiry strategies when reading documents related to westward expansion and learned to plan argumentative essays related to each historical event. Results indicate that in comparison to 62 students in a control group who did not receive either form of instruction, students who demonstrated mastery of the target strategies during instruction wrote historically more accurate and more persuasive essays regardless of their initial learning profile. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Achievement goal orientations and self-regulation in writing: An integrative perspective.

This study tested the hypothesis that self-regulation of writing is a multifaceted modular construct and that students would perceive different goal orientations for writing as involving the application of different writing strategies. Two hundred eleven Jewish Israeli high school students engaged in a writing assignment and then reported on their goal orientations, self-regulation, and writing strategies. Smallest space analyses indicated that self-regulation and writing strategies were perceived as elements within goal orientations, thus suggesting a phenomenological integration of motivation and self-regulation of writing into task-related action orientations. The findings pointed to possible differences in the nature of these action orientations between students from different types of learning environments and with different levels of writing achievement. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of structure strategy instruction delivered to fifth-grade children using the Internet with and without the aid of older adult tutors.

The authors assessed the impact of using the structure strategy as a base for an intergenerational Internet tutoring program in which older adults, with strategy training, provided Internet-based tutoring for 5th-grade students learning the strategy through an instructional Web site. Students were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 groups: structure strategy with tutors, structure strategy without tutors, and control. Both tutors and children in the structure strategy group with tutors increased strategy use, total and main idea recall, and self-efficacy. Program effects were apparent months after instruction. Posttest performance was related both to careful completion of Web lessons and amount of tutor feedback and content-related questions. Findings have implications for learning from computers, intergenerational tutoring, and reading instruction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A comparative study of programed and conventional instruction in industry.

"Programed textbooks containing 719 frames were prepared covering the introductory 15 hours of a 16-week course for trainees in a 7070 Data Processing System servicing course. Achievement test scores for six experimental classes (n = 70) who used these programed texts were compared with those of two control classes (n = 42) taught by the lecture-discussion method. Significant gains in achievement and reduction of training time were found for the experimental classes. Student reaction to programed instruction as measured by a questionnaire was found to be favorable." From Psyc Abstracts 36:04:4KC25H. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Learning the control of variables strategy in higher and lower achieving classrooms: Contributions of explicit instruction and experimentation.

Students (n = 797) from 36 4th-grade classrooms were taught the control of variables strategy for designing experiments. In the instruct condition, classes were taught in an interactive lecture format. In the manipulate condition, students worked in groups to design and run experiments to determine the effects of four variables. In the both condition, classes received the interactive lecture and also designed and ran experiments. We assessed students' understanding using a written test of their ability to distinguish valid from invalid experimental comparisons. Performance on this test improved from the pretest to the immediate posttest in all conditions, and gains were maintained at a 5-month delay. For students from both higher and lower achieving schools, gains ordered as follows: both > instruct > manipulate. However, students from higher achieving schools showed greater gains in all conditions. Item analyses showed that the interactive lecture improved students' understanding of the need to control irrelevant variables, and experimentation improved students' understanding of the need to vary the focal variable. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Computerized instruction and the learning process: Erratum.

Reports an error in the original article by Richard C. Atkinson (American Psychologist, 1968[Apr]). The last sentence of the first column on page 231 should read as follows: (b) Items for which the correct answer is an adjective are more difficult to comprehend than items in which the correct answer is a noun or verb; similarly, verbs are more difficult than nouns. (The following abstract of this article originally appeared in record 2005-10451-001). Discusses developments in the field of computer assisted instruction (CAI), focusing on the Stanford Project, initiated in 1964 under a grant from the Office of Education to develop and implement a CAI program in initial reading and mathematics. A progress report deals with the reading program with particular reference to the past school year, when for the first time a sizable group of students received a major portion of their daily reading instruction under computer control. The first year's operation must be considered essentially as an extended debugging of both the computer system and the curriculum materials. Nevertheless, some interesting comments can be made on the basis of this experience regarding both the feasibility of CAI and the impact of such instruction on the overall learning process. Parts of the project addressed include the CAI reading curriculum, problems in implementing the curriculum, and some results from the first year of operation with first grade students. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of alphabet-letter instruction on young children's word recognition.

This study examined the influence of letter-name instruction on beginning word recognition. Thirty-three preschool children from low-socioeconomic-status families participated in 16 weeks of letter-name or comprehension-focused instruction. After instruction, children's ability to learn 3 types of word spellings was examined: words phonetically spelled with letters children had been taught (e.g., BL for ball), words phonetically spelled with letters children had not been taught, and words with visually distinct letter spellings that were nonphonetic. Children who received letter-name instruction learned words phonetically spelled with letters included in instruction significantly better than other words. Children receiving comprehension instruction performed significantly better on visually distinct word spellings. Results demonstrate the beneficial effects of alphabet-letter instruction on beginning phonetic word recognition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Components analysis of cognitive strategy instruction: Effects on learning disabled students' compositions and self-efficacy.

The viability of self-instructional strategy training among learning disabled (LD) students exhibiting composition deficiencies was investigated. Furthermore, the theoretically proposed incremental effects of explicit self-regulation procedures were examined in terms of writing performance measures at posttest, maintenance, and generalization, and in terms of Ss' self-efficacy. Ss were 22 LD and 11 normally achieving students in the 5th and 6th grades. Results indicated that self-instructional strategy training produced meaningful and lasting effects on Ss' composition skills and a significantly heightened sense of self-efficacy. Explicit self-regulation procedures did not significantly augment strategy-instruction effects for either writing performance or self-efficacy. Composition performance after instruction among LD Ss did not differ significantly in terms of story grammar elements from that of a contrast group of normally achieving, competent writers. However, normally achieving students' compositions were longer and received significantly higher quality ratings. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effects of step size, response mode and knowledge of results upon achievement in programmed instruction.

This study explored the likelihood that current inconsistencies in findings relating to the programming variables of step size (SS), response mode (RM) and knowledge of results (KR) might stem from the tendency of past research to investigate these variables in isolation from each other. Such an approach fails to make provision for the observation of possible interactions. Accordingly, four levels of KR (O, 50% variable-ratio, 100%, 100% plus incentive), three levels of RM (overt, covert, covert plus random overt) and two levels of SS (large, small) were incorporated into a factorial design. Three intact classrooms were randomly assigned to each of the twenty-four treatment conditions. A linear program with content structured to teach certain concepts pertaining to earth-sun relationships served as the learning task. The treatment combinations were evaluated for their effects upon immediate learning and delayed retention. Immediate learning was maximized by treatments that coupled a small step program with an overt response mode. KR was generally not an important contributor to immediate learning. Analysis of immediate learning data also revealed significant SS×RM and SS×KR interactions. There were no differences, however, among treatments in terms of facilitating delayed retention of content. It was concluded that a reappraisal is required of the pivotal assumption that programmed instruction's effectiveness derives from the explicit provision of KR. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Metacognitive control and strategy selection: Deciding to practice retrieval during learning.

Retrieval practice is a potent technique for enhancing learning, but how often do students practice retrieval when they regulate their own learning? In 4 experiments the subjects learned foreign-language items across multiple study and test periods. When items were assigned to be repeatedly tested, repeatedly studied, or removed after they were recalled, repeated retrieval produced powerful effects on learning and retention. However, when subjects were given control over their own learning and could choose to test, study, or remove items, many subjects chose to remove items rather than practice retrieval, leading to poor retention. In addition, when tests were inserted in the learning phase, attempting retrieval improved learning by enhancing subsequent encoding during study. But when students were given control over their learning they did not attempt retrieval as early or as often as they should to promote the best learning. The experiments identify a compelling metacognitive illusion that occurs during self-regulated learning: Once students can recall an item they tend to believe they have “learned” it. This leads students to terminate practice rather than practice retrieval, a strategy choice that ultimately results in poor retention. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Metacognitive regulation of text learning: On screen versus on paper.

Despite immense technological advances, learners still prefer studying text from printed hardcopy rather than from computer screens. Subjective and objective differences between on-screen and on-paper learning were examined in terms of a set of cognitive and metacognitive components, comprising a Metacognitive Learning Regulation Profile (MLRP) for each study media. Participants studied expository texts of 1000–1200 words in one of the two media and for each text they provided metacognitive prediction-of-performance judgments with respect to a subsequent multiple-choice test. Under fixed study time (Experiment 1), test performance did not differ between the two media, but when study time was self-regulated (Experiment 2) worse performance was observed on screen than on paper. The results suggest that the primary differences between the two study media are not cognitive but rather metacognitive—less accurate prediction of performance and more erratic study-time regulation on screen than on paper. More generally, this study highlights the contribution of metacognitive regulatory processes to learning and demonstrates the potential of the MLRP methodology for revealing the source of subjective and objective differences in study performance among study conditions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Speech Recognition Technology and Students With Writing Difficulties: Improving Fluency.

The present study investigated the effects of speech recognition technology (SR) and advance planning on children's writing processes. Fluent and less fluent writers, ages 11 to 14, composed 4 narratives, via handwriting and SR, both with and without advance planning. Less fluent children's handwritten narratives were significantly inferior to those of fluent children in terms of length, quality, and surface errors. For less fluent writers, SR (a) significantly increased the length and (b) decreased the surface errors of narratives. Although narrative length related positively to holistic quality, SR did not significantly improve quality. Advance planning helped children to compose more fully developed stories. For children with writing difficulties, advance planning and SR may each independently support text generation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Instruction begins in the home: Relations between parental instruction and children's self-regulation in the classroom.

The study examined the effectiveness of 3 aspects of parental instruction for predicting children's self-regulation in school. Fathers, mothers, and their children (52 families) were visited in their homes the summer before the child entered 3rd grade. Metacognitive content (task and strategy information), manner of instruction (small steps at an appropriate pace), and emotional support were coded from parents' instructions to their children for a problem-solving task. Children's self-regulatory behaviors in the classroom were assessed the following school year. Two patterns of relations were observed. Manner of instruction predicted children's attention to instructions and help-seeking in the classroom. Metacognitive content of instructions did not predict these aspects of self-regulation. In contrast, metacognitive content of instructions presented in an understandable manner with emotional support predicted children's monitoring and metacognitive talk. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)