Despite the recommendation to use both expert and learner feedback during formative evaluation, little research has compared the differences in data produced by these two sources. The presents study examines the differences in feedback produced by experts and learners. Six sessions with experts and six sessions with learners were conducted to obtain feedback about a six page instructional unit. The think-aloud method was used to gather data from experts and the talk-aloud method was used with learners. Comments from experts and learners were transcribed, segmented, and coded according to two coding system which addressed both the amount and type of feedback. Results indicated that when compared to learners, experts identify a higher percentage of problems, make more comments related to their knowledge of the subject matter, provide more revision suggestions, and summarize their comments and actions more often. Learners elaborate more about each problem and focus on issues related to instructional design and language. The findings support the use of both experts and learners to evaluate instruction.

This study explored patterns of conceptual knowledge organization using a word association task among Grade 8 learners at an Ex-Model C school. The goal was to show links between conceptual knowledge development and the social and political context of learners, their individual characteristics and preferences, and the ways they individually went about their learning and thinking.This study was undertaken in the Pietermaritzburg area at a school that draws the majority of its student population from its immediate vicinity, the surrounding townships, the Eastern Cape and a small number from the surrounding communities. A quantitative and qualitative research methodology was employed in this study using an experimental research design. Three experimental tasks were replicated from Ross and Murphy (1999) with learners across Grade 8 in a developing context. This study explored how Grade 8 learners represented, accessed, and made inferences about a real world category; food, that is complex multi-dimentional and multi-hierarchical, and cross-classificatory. The learners were selected randomly and included a good representation of the schools demographics. Different sets of learners were used in each task. The learners’ groupings and rationales for the category generating, rating, and sorting experiments were recorded on data schedules. The researcher utilized an experiment used by Bernstein (1970), Holland (1981) and Hoadley (2005) in their studies to show how working class and middle class children differently organized knowledge at the conceptual level. Other than the above research there have also been further, perhaps even more sophisticated, food classification experiments that have been completed. I focus on these latter experiments to grapple with some of the main claims provided in gthe above works. Experimental research was used to gather data. The experimental research design included the following experimental tasks: category generating, category rating and category sorting. Interviews were carried out to obtain a deeper understanding of why the learners made certain choices and to clarify responses offered in the experiments. No strong conclusions were drawn from this limited sample. Nevertheless there was a notable insufficiency in the learner’s usage of taxonomic categories. A small proportion of the subjects were able to categorise and organise food items by their macronutrients, suggesting a taxonomic chain. The study also revealed that there were categories that did show groupings of foods of the same consecutive kinds. However, they pointed instead to the situation of the event, or healthiness of the food item. Food items were found to be typical members of both taxonomic and thematic categories. The default (non-directed) group results showed that its sortings were heavily influenced by script or thematic categories. Hence, the subjects in this sample displayed a weakness to organise knowledge taxonomically. / Thesis (M.Ed.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2012.

No description available.

Two hundred and nine undergraduate students enrolled in an introductory Anthropology course were pre-tested using the Learning and Study Strategy Inventories (LASSI) to establish their learning approach. Concept mapping was used to alter a student's learning approach from a non-creative to a creative approach. Students were then post-tested using the LASSI to evaluate the learning intervention. The first hypothesis proposed that non-creative learners would become more holistic and creative learners as a result of the concept mapping intervention. No significant treatment effects were found. Non-creative learners made significant gains in concentration from pre to post testing. It was also hypothesized that certain demographic variables would help explain the learning approach a student demonstrated. Science students had the highest mean attitude, motivation, concentration and time management and use of test strategies. Anthropology students had the highest anxiety, and arts students increased on information processing. Nineteen year olds were the most motivated and attitude decreased with age. Second year students who had taken a previous course in anthropology had higher mean attitudes, motivation, concentration, selecting main ideas, and use of test strategies when compared to second year students who hadn't taken a previous course. Science students increased their mean use of test strategies regardless of previous course work. Overall, the mean use of test strategies increased regardless of faculty affiliation had a student taken a previous course.

This multi-case study compared the practices and knowledge of six experienced teachers who perceive themselves to use an inquiry approach to instruction, to those of two teachers who do not, and compared their conceptualizations to a portrait of the inquiry literature. The inquiry teachers were purposively selected from three levels---elementary, secondary, and university---and different subjects. / They and two non-inquiry teachers contributed three interviews each. Transcripts were coded using codes derived from the literature, then open coding using the teachers' own words to represent categories. Four postulated constructs of inquiry, process, content, strategy, and context, were found in the literature and in experienced inquiry teachers' detailed conceptualizations of inquiry as shown in their definitions, interviews, and concept maps. Inquiry teachers were distinguished from the non-inquiry teachers by the relative difference in the frequency of their use of the four constructs. The inquiry teachers each had one predominant construct that they emphasized more in their teaching, and their identity could be expressed in terms of their pedagogical use of these four constructs. The non-inquiry teachers made fewer inquiry statements when compared to the literature and when compared to their own personal statements. Inquiry teachers' background, education, and informal experiences were also directly related to their conceptualizations of inquiry.

This investigation was designed first to determine the effect upon learning of various instructional treatments related to adjunct instruction, and second to determine the interaction of certain student characteristics with method in learning under these various instructional treatments. The term adjunct instruction is used to indicate instructional material designed to be used with other educational media, in this investigation, mainly the educational psychology textbook and secondarily with outside readings and instructor presentations.With respect to the treatments, the variables were format of the instructional material, as linear program or instructional quiz; the method of presentation of the instructional material, as teaching machine with immediate feedback and framed exposure, simple immediate feedback and framed exposure, simple immediate feedback device with open exposure, and delayed feedback device with open exposure; and the presence or absence of threat that the students’ performance on the instructional material would be counted as part of the final course grade.In the second aspect of the investigation, the following learner characteristics were studied with respect to learning or the various treatments: general mental ability, memory, ding, interest, attitude, general and test anxiety, and creativity.The subjects were 257 sophomore and junior level students enrolled in a course in educational psychology. The experimental unit was designed to be implemented in the assigned laboratory session, meeting one period per week and extending over a five-week period. The specially prepared linear programs and instructional quizzes were administered in the laboratory sessions.The criterion measure was a 44-item multiple-choice achievement test previously developed and tested in a pilot study. This measure was administered at the end of the experimental unit. The data concerning the eight learner characteristics were collected during the semester, prior to the administration of the criterion learning measure.The analysis of variance technique was employed to assess differences between instructional treatments. Two forms of this technique were utilized: the one-way analyses to test differences between the instructional variables, and the four-factor factorial to test for significant interactions. Where necessary, the Newman-Keuls test, an a posteriori method for testing differences, was utilized. As series of regression analyses were also run in which all eight learner characteristic variables were used in a single matrix to predict the dependent variable. No significant difference was found between the program the 'quiz, immediate and delayed feedback, open and controlled exposure to the instructional material, or the presence and absence of threat in the learning situation. The only significant postulated interaction occurred between the level of threat variable and the learner characteristic of mental ability. Here students of high ability operating in the non-threat situation scored significantly higher on the criterion test than the high ability group working under the threat rendition, and significantly higher than the low mental ability groups working in either the threat or the non-threat situations.Regression analyses were run for each of the two types of format, the three methods of presentation, and the two levels of threat. The reading test score appeared as a correlate in each of the seven sets of significant correlates. The multiple R for these sets of significant correlates ranged from .53 to .63. It was concluded that the level of multiple correlations remained essentially the same for the Seven analyses but that the set of predictor variables changed in the different instructional conditions.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1983. / Bibliography: leaves 139-147. / Microfiche. / x, 147 leaves, bound ill. 29 cm

Typescript. / Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii, 1969. / Bibliography: leaves [105]-109. / iii, 109 l illus., graphs, tables

Typescript. / Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1976. / Bibliography: leaves [69]-71. / Microfiche. / v, 71 leaves, 3 leaves of plates col. ill

326 leaves / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of Psychology, 1969