The purposes of this study were to explore students&rsquo / perceptions of the extent to which constructivist approaches are present in chemistry classes at high school level in Turkey, to assess students&rsquo / perceptions of their chemistry teachers&rsquo / communication behaviours in their classroom learning environments and to investigate the learning strategies of students in chemistry classes considering school type, gender, and grade level differences. In this study, the Constructivist Learning Environment Questionnaire (CLES), the Teacher Communication Behaviour v Questionnaire (TCBQ) and the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ) were used as measuring instruments. In addition, the questionnaires included some questions for demographic characteristics of participants. The study was conducted in conveniently selected two schools (private and public) in Ankara with a total of 994 ninth and tenth grade students in the second term of 2006-2007 semesters. Data obtained from the administration of measuring instruments by using the analysis of multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) The results of the study indicated that school type, gender and grade level of the students had significant effect on perception of classroom learning environment, teacher&rsquo / communication behaviour and perceived use of learning strategies. For instance, students in private schools perceived their classroom-learning environment more constructivist than student in public school. In addition girls rated that, their learning environment and teachers&rsquo / communication behaviours more favourably than did boys. The study also showed that students use rehearsal-learning strategy mostly in their chemistry classrooms.

The aim of this study was twofold: first, to investigate the effect of grade level on students&rsquo / motivational beliefs (self-efficacy, intrinsic value, mastery goals and performance goals) in science, and second to examine the relationships between students&rsquo / motivational beliefs and their science grades. The Turkish version of the Approaches to Learning Instrument (mastery goals and performance goals) and the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (self-efficacy and intrinsic value) were used as data collection instruments. The Turkish version of the Approaches to Learning Instrument (ALI) was adopted into Turkish and pilot tested with 390 elementary school students. The main study was applied to 900 elementary school students in Grades 6 through 8 from 5 randomly selected schools in Bolu. The data obtained from the measuring instruments were analyzed by using Multivariate Analyses of Variance (MANOVA) and correlation analyses. Results of the analyses revealed that grade level has a significant effect on students&rsquo / motivational beliefs and as grade level increases student motivation in science declines. Accordingly, 6th grade students are found to be more self-efficacious in science and they show more intrinsic interest in science and study science course for the reasons of learning and mastering as well as showing their abilities to others compared to 7th grade and 8th grade students. Concerning the motivational level of 7 and 8 graders, results also showed that 7 graders&rsquo / motivational beliefs are more favorable than 8 graders. Moreover, results revealed significant positive relationships between all motivational belief variables and science grade in all grade levels except for the performance goal orientation. Additionally, significant positive relationships were found among all motivational belief variables.

Peer tutoring as an instructional strategy has been used by school personnel to increase academic achievement in the classroom setting. Traditionally, the peer tutoring concept relies on student partnerships linking higher achieving students with lower achieving students for structured reading sessions. Recently, new studies have focused on linking students with comparable reading achievements or cross-age peer tutors. Research suggests that using peer tutors may promote higher reading fluency in at-risk students as compared to teacher instruction. A potential reason for this phenomenon includes students’ comfort level with peers allowing for a more easy development of reading growth. The purpose of this study is to determine the effectiveness, efficiency, and scalability of cross-age peer tutoring on reading fluency and reading comprehension. The study involved 7 fifth grade struggling readers as tutors to 7 third grade struggling readers. Reading to Read was used as the intervention protocol. The dyads met for 5 weeks with progress monitoring conducted at the beginning of each week. Results indicated consistent benefit in improving reading fluency in 13 of the 14 participants. Several implications to the study can be identified. Peer assisted learning can benefit both participants in reading fluency. Participating in the peer assisted learning process improves the attitudes toward reading of below grade level readers. Further implications, limitations, and future research relating to the results of this study are also discussed.

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Made available in DSpace on 2016-03-22T17:26:45Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao_Eduardo_Revisado.pdf: 3489154 bytes, checksum: 3c327ee0bc47d79cd4af46e065105650 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011-03-29 / Text retrieved from the Internet through Google and Yahoo queries are evaluated using Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level, a simple assessment measure of text readability. This kind of metrics were created to help writers to evaluate their text, and recently in automatic text simplification for undercapable readers. In this work we apply these metrics to documents freely retrieved from the Internet, seeking to find correlations between legibility and relevance acknowledged to then by search engines. The initial premise guiding the comparison between readability and relevance is the statement known as Occam s Principle, or Principle of Economy. This study employs Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level in text documents retrieved from the Internet through search-engines queries and correlate it with the position. It was found a centralist trend in the texts recovered. The centralist tendency mean that the average spacing of groups of files from the average of the category they belong is meaningfull. With this measure is possible to establish a correlation between relevance and legibility, and also, to detect diferences in the way both search engines derive their relevance calculation. A subsequent experiment seeks to determine whether the measure of legibility can be employed to assist him or her choosing a document combined with original search engine ranking and if it is useful as advance information for choice and user navigation. In a final experiment, based on previously obtained knowledge, a comparison between Wikipedia and Britannica encyclopedias by employing the metric of understandability Flesch-Kincaid / Textos recuperados da Internet por interm´edio de consultas ao Google e Yahoo s ao analisados segundo uma m´etrica simples de avaliac¸ ao de inteligibilidade textual. Tais m´etricas foram criadas para orientar a produc¸ ao textual e recentemente tamb´em foram empregadas em simplificadores textuais autom´aticos experimentais para leitores inexperientes. Nesse trabalho aplicam-se essas m´etricas a texto originais livres, recuperados da Internet, para buscar correlacionar o grau de inteligibilidade textual com a relev ancia que lhes ´e conferida pelos buscadores utilizados. A premissa inicial a estimular a comparac¸ ao entre inteligibilidade e relev ancia ´e o enunciado conhecido como Princ´ıpio de Occam, ou princ´ıpio da economia. Observa-se uma tend encia centralista que ocorre a partir do pequeno afastamento m´edio dos grupos de arquivos melhor colocados no ranking em relac¸ ao `a m´edia da categoria a que pertencem. ´E com a medida do afastamento m´edio que se consegue verificar correlac¸ ao com a posic¸ ao do arquivo no ranking e ´e tamb´em com essa medida que se consegue registrar diferenc¸as entre o m´etodo de calcular a relev ancia do Google e do Yahoo. Um experimento que decorre do primeiro estudo procura determinar se a medida de inteligibilidade pode ser empregada para auxiliar o usu´ario da Internet a escolher arquivos mais simples ou se a sua indicac¸ ao junto `a listagem de links recuperados ´e ´util e informativa para a escolha e navegac¸ ao do usu´ario. Em um experimento final, embasado no conhecimento previamente obtido, s ao comparadas as enciclop´edias Brit anica eWikip´edia por meio do emprego da m´etrica de inteligibilidade Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of a modified system of least intrusive prompts on text-dependent listening comprehension for four middle-school-aged students with intellectual disability and autism during read-alouds of adapted grade-level biographies. A system of least intrusive prompts was modified by inserting a rule for answering questions and an opportunity to hear sections of the biography again. The procedure was evaluated via a multiple probe design across students. Outcomes indicate that all students improved listening comprehension after intervention and all students maintained high levels of correct responding 2 weeks after intervention. In addition, three students generalized skills to new biographies. The need for future research and implications for practice are discussed.

This study investigated the effects of grade level and gender on elementary school students&rsquo / motivation towards science learning. This study was carried out during 2007-2008 fall semester at 12 public elementary schools in Yenimahalle districts of Ankara. A total of 2231 students (1121 boys, 1093 girls, 17 did not report their gender) participated in the study. In terms of grade level, 1164 were enrolled in 6th grade level and 1055 in 8th grade (12 did not report their grade level). Data were collected through Students&rsquo / Motivation Towards Science Learning Questionnaire (SMTSL). Two-way Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) was conducted in order to identify the effects of grade level and gender on six dimensions of motivation (i.e. self efficacy, active learning strategies, learning environment stimulation, science learning value, achievement goal and performance goal) towards science learning. Two-way MANOVA results showed that grade level and gender had a significant effect on the collective dependent variables. Follow-up univariate analysis indicated that there was a significant difference between 6th and 8th grade students&rsquo / motivation towards science learning regarding mean scores on each motivational variable. In addition, mean scores on each motivational variable, except leaning environment stimulation, were significantly different for boys and girls, in favors of girls. Result demonstrated that students&rsquo / motivation towards science learning declined as the grade level increased and girls had a higher motivation towards science learning than boys.

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