1,720,970 research outputs found
Prior knowledge, text coherence, and interest: How they interact in learning from instructional texts
No full textThe effects of topic knowledge, text coherence, and topic interest on learning from text were examined. One hundred sixty high school students participated in 1 of 4 groups according to their levels of topic knowledge and interest. Participants read 1 of 3 versions of a scientific text: minimally coherent, locally coherent, and locally and globally coherent. Text comprehension was examined by tasks aimed at tapping both textbase and situation-model levels. The contribution of topic interest seemed to increase according to the quantity of learners' topic knowledge. High-knowledge and high-interest students performed significantly better than those in the other 3 groups in all tasks. Text version differentiated students' performance on all measures but 1. The expected Group x Version interactions did not emerge
Role of epistemological understanding and interest in interpreting a controversy and in topic-specific belief change
No full textThis study focuses on the influence of high school students' (10th and 11th grade) epistemological understanding and topic interest on their interpretation of a dual-position expository text about genetically modified food, as well as on the change in their beliefs about the topic. After reading, students were given different tasks: (1) to write a conclusion for the text, which presented two opposing positions but lacked an overall concluding paragraph, (2) to write personal comments on the text, (3) to answer questions on conceptual understanding, and (4) to rate their interest in the text. Participants were also asked to rate their beliefs about transgenic food before and after reading the text. The findings show the effects of students' level of epistemological understanding when writing conclusions to the text, and commenting on (a) the role of science and scientists' work with respect to nature, (b) the need for further scientific investigation, and (c) the effective value of transgenic food production. Students' topic interest affected their answers to the questions on the text arguments and their text-based interest. In addition, after reading, a change emerged in students' beliefs about the topic in relation to their epistemological understanding
Apprendere dal testo espositivo: interazioni tra conoscenza e interesse degli studenti e coerenza testuale
No full textLa comprensione del testo è un processo complesso e dinamico, mediante cui il lettore costruisce una rappresentazione coerente del suo significato. Due fattori soprattutto contribuiscono a questa rappresentazione, secondo quanto emerso dalla ricerca in psicologia cognitiva. Il primo è la coerenza testuale, cioè il grado in cui i periodi e le parti di un testo sono connessi, facilitando così la costruzione di una rappresentazione coerente del testo. L'altro fattore è il contributo del lettore: un testo non dà tutta l'informazione necessaria alla sua comprensione, e il lettore deve riempire i vuoti di informazione mediante un’attività inferenziale, cioè usando la conoscenza di cui dispone relativamente all'argomento e alla struttura del testo. Lo scopo del nostro studio è stato quello di dimostrare che la comprensione del testo non è solo influenzata dalla conoscenza che il lettore già possiede sull’argomento specifico, ma anche dal suo interesse per l'argomento, quindi da un fattore di tipo motivazionale
Causal Coherence in Deaf and Hearing Students' Written Narratives
No full textThis study investigates the causal coherence of deaf students’ written narratives and the relation between students’ use of causal structures in narrative writing and their linguistic skills. The written narratives of 17 deaf high school students were compared
with those of 2 groups of hearing writers: 17 high school tudents and 16 second graders. Participants were asked to produce a written narrative on the basis of the picture storybook Frog, Where Are You? (Mayer, 1969) and their texts were analyzed
according to the causal network model. The number of psychological links and superordinate and subordinate narrative episodes were considered, and the extent to which the use of these causal structures and deaf students’ scores in a written syntax comprehension test correlated was examined. Results show that deaf writers made use of principles of causal organization in narrative writing. However, their texts
were causally less coherent than those of their hearing peers and closer to young hearing writers’ texts, although with some important differences in the strategies for generating coherence. Deaf students’ written syntax skills seemed to be only partially correlated with their difficulties in generating causal coherence
On Narrative Reading-Writing Relationships: How Young Writers Construe the Reader's Need for Inferences.
No full textWriting to learn, writing to transfer
No full textThis chapter is focused on writing to develop thinking and reasoning about complex phenomena in the elementary school. It introduces a study aimed at investigating whether writing as a learning tool could be used by students first for understanding in history and then for understanding in science by transferring a disposition toward writing as a meaningful activity in knowledge construction. Making writing a meaningful activity for students implies leading them to experience the different functions it can have in the learning process: not only to record information, but also to expose, reflect, discuss, argue, and communicate. Thirty-two fifth graders divided in two groups, experimental (writing) and control (non-writing), were involved in the implementation of a history curriculum unit on the discovery of America and of a science curriculum unit on the human circulatory system. The findings provide evidence that writing can be effectively introduced across the curriculum to support higher-order thinking processes in order to produce understanding. The experimental group students were able to transfer the attitude, which characterized their writing activity in history to the domain of science, reaching a deeper conceptual understanding in both disciplines, as well as more advanced metaconceptual awareness of their learning. It may be concluded that if knowledge construction and reconstruction in the classroom is sustained by activities requiring the deep engagement of students as intentional learners who solve knowledge problems, then such an engagement can be activated by writing as a tool for thinking and reasoning to transform knowledge
Typographical cueing and text comprehension: The effect of written signalling and text structure.
No full textImproving the quality of students' academic writing: an intervention study
No full textAn intervention aimed at improving academic writing - in particular, synthesis writing - was conducted with 52 undergraduate students of psychology of the University of Padua ( Italy). Before and after the intervention, which lasted 12 weeks, participants were administered a questionnaire on beliefs about writing and a synthesis writing task. During the intervention, participants practised academic writing by composing texts which were revised by the teacher, and analysing and discussing examples of good and poor academic texts. The results showed an improvement in students' ability to write a synthesis, whereas their beliefs about writing were only partially affected by the intervention
Classroom discussion and individual problem solving in the teaching of history: Do different instructional approaches affect interest in different ways?
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