Theories: M

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• Machine-controlled adaptive training: task difficulty varies as a function of trainee performance - In adaptive training, the task presented to the trainee varies as a function of how well he performs.
• MacIntyre et al.'s (1998) heuristic pyramid model of willingness to communicate in L2 - The article describes the comprehensive 1998 model of L2 willingness to communicate by MacIntyre, Clement, Dörnyei and Noels, which treats WTC as a situational rather than trait-like variable.
• MacIntyre et al.'s situational model of willingness to communicate in L2 - The article describes WTC in a second language via the model of MacIntyre et al.
• MacIntyre et al.'s willingness-to-communicate (WTC) model as a framework linking pronunciation and affective variables - The article uses the WTC model (MacIntyre et al., 1998) as its organizing framework, which takes into account the many variables present when initiating a communicative exchange in the L2.
• Macro-, Micro- and Meso-Level Stations of Inequality Production - A three-level account, drawn from Lamont, Beljean and Clair (2014), of "three essential stations to understand the production of inequalities": macro-level material, symbolic and location-based inequa
• Makiguchi's Theory of Value (beauty, gain, good) as a framework for Soka (value-creating) education - Soka education, formulated by Tsunesaburo Makiguchi and Josei Toda and advanced by Daisaku Ikeda, is a humanistic approach in which education's essential role is enabling value creation for individual
• MALL as a burgeoning subdivision of CALL shaped by Mobile 2.0 user-created and collaborative content - The review frames mobile assisted language learning (MALL) as "a burgeoning subdivision of computer assisted language learning in general", driven by the spread of smartphones and tablets that blur bo
• Man-Technology model: an interwoven teacher education design integrating general education, professional education, and man-technology study - The Man-Technology model is a teacher education design in which general education, professional education, and the man-technology area are deliberately interrelated rather than taught as separate enti
• Mann's six teaching styles taxonomy for higher education - The paper adopts Richard Mann's (1975) scheme defining six teaching styles: expert, formal authority, socializing agent, facilitator, ego ideal, and person.
• MAP Growth norms taxonomy: ten norms per subject, level, and grade, spanning achievement, within-year growth, and between-year growth - The manual organizes MAP Growth norms as a taxonomy producing "10 distinct norms for a given subject,level, and grade".
• Market-competition theory of voucher systemic effects, modified by financial hold-harmless design - The article describes the theory behind voucher programs: parental choice should improve student learning both for users and for students remaining in traditional public schools, because losing studen
• Martin and Reigeluth's six dimensions of affective development - The article adopts Martin and Reigeluth's (1999) framework dividing the affective domain of learning into six dimensions.
• Maslow 2.0 Digital Needs Pyramid: a digital-transformation revision of Maslow's hierarchy in which each need level is classified by Web 2.0 tools - The Maslow 2.0 Digital Needs Pyramid rethinks Maslow's five-level hierarchy of needs for the postmodern, digitally transformed world: the need names are unchanged but their satisfaction is renewed, an
• Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs - Maslow's hierarchy of needs proposes that human motivation is organized by prepotency, from physiological needs through safety, love/belonging, and esteem to self-actualization, with lower needs typic
• Materialized Action - Learning emerges from the intra-action of a learner's body and a material's own properties (tension, spring-back, thickness) across nested levels of a made artifact — materials are treated as active c
• Mathematical framework of edit-based hint policies - The article provides "precise definitions of key concepts in the field of edit-based hint policies and integrate them into a mathematical framework".
• Mathematical learning progressions as a lens for evaluating teachers' curriculum adaptations - The study uses mathematical learning progressions as the standard against which teachers' content adaptations to middle school math curricula are judged.
• McWhirter's four-requirement empowerment model as a framework for adventure therapy programs - The paper adopts McWhirter's (1991) model, in which empowerment is broader than autonomy or efficacy and reaches outside the individual.
• Mead's four-phase framework groups high school students by readiness, protection needs, and responsibility rather than age alone - In her 1960 essay on the high school of the future, Mead proposed four phases of learners.
• Mead's social conception of education recognizing both the child and society - The course description of Mead's Course 50, quoted in the article, frames two inadequate one-sided theories of education: a psychological theory justified by the development of the child, and a sociol
• Mead's taxonomy of post-figurative, co-figurative, and pre-figurative cultures explains how accelerating change reverses the direction of learning - The report presents Mead's three-part cultural taxonomy for characterizing how knowledge passes between generations.
• Mead's theory of the social origin of reflective consciousness - The article reconstructs Mead's central claim that reflective consciousness — both self-consciousness and conceptual thought — is not an original endowment but emerges within social interaction.
• Mead's three phases of the act: emotional, aesthetic, and intellectual - In the reconstructed lectures Mead distinguishes three phases in the development of the act.
• Mean-Recall Approximation for the Leitner Queue Network - The mean-recall approximation is the article's heuristic that treats each Leitner deck as an M/M/1 queue, replacing each item's true delay with an exponential draw so recall probability becomes a func
• Mechanisms of change in self-management interventions: reactivity to self-monitoring and perceived autonomy - The review proposes two behavioral principles underlying SM.
• Mechanistic Reasoning - Mechanistic reasoning explains a phenomenon by identifying the interacting entities, properties, and activities — organized in space and time — that cause it, in contrast to teleological (purpose-base
• Membership model for classifying individuals into the common variance model - A companion model to the Bayes factor test that moves from testing the average assumption to person-level classification.
• Mental models as a situational alternative to schema theory for comprehending novel situations and texts - The essay presents mental models, following McNamara, Miller and Bransford (1991) and Johnston-Laird (1989), as an alternative to schema theory for understanding novel situations and objects that sche
• Mental models framework: children's conceptual understandings as coherent, theory-like structures constrained by presuppositions - The article adopts Vosniadou and colleagues' account in which "children represent scientific concepts in the form of theory-like structures that are internally coherent and empirically accurate," stru
• Merit awards as labor-market signals of principal effectiveness - The article advances a signaling account of merit awards: although awards are intended to induce effort, they may also convey new information to outside employers.
• Merrill's first five principles of instruction as the framework for quality teaching and learning - The article adopts Merrill's first principles of instruction as its organizing framework: "1) task centeredness, 2) demonstration, 3) activation, 4) application, and 5) integration".
• Merrill's First Principles of Instruction: four phases revolving around a problem - The digest presents Merrill's (2002) First Principles of Instruction as the most recent comprehensive framework for designing lessons aimed primarily at cognitive learning, springing from an eclectic
• Meta-Strategic Knowledge (MSK): awareness of the thinking strategies used in certain environments, governing the cognitive system - Drawing on Zohar and David (2009), the article presents Meta-Strategic Knowledge as a branch of metacognitive monitoring that includes knowledge of tasks and knowledge of strategies.
• Meta-UTAUT model of technology acceptance applied to MALL in EFL learning - Meta-UTAUT, proposed by Dwivedi et al.
• Metacognition - Metacognition is knowledge about one's own thinking and the ability to regulate cognitive strategies accordingly; it develops gradually across childhood, with distinct failure modes describing why a l
• Metacognition as a framework for making thinking visible across artistic and academic learning - The article presents metacognition as "the awareness and understanding of one's thinking and learning processes," introduced through training with evidence behind embedding it instructionally.
• Metacognitive knowledge framework: knowledge of cognition divided into declarative, procedural, and conditional knowledge - The article adopts Flavell's and Schraw's framework in which metacognition comprises metacognitive knowledge and regulation of cognition, and knowledge of cognition "can be further divided into three
• Metaconceptual processes framework: metacognitive knowledge and processes specific to concept learning, classified as knowledge, awareness, monitoring, and evaluation - The article adopts the metaconceptual framework to focus metacognition on concept learning during reading: "the term metaconceptual has been used to focus on metacognitive processes that are specific
• Metaphor as the linking mechanism between presentational and propositional knowing - Drawing on Mezirow's two dimensions of awareness and Lakoff and Johnson's conceptual metaphor theory, the article treats metaphor as the bridge between imagistic and rational construal.
• Micro-credential earning as professional learning aligned to Learning Forward standards and Knowles's adult learning principles - The paper frames earning micro-credentials as a high-leverage professional learning activity aligned with Learning Forward's Standards for Professional Learning—Learning Communities, Leadership, Resou
• Microstructure is language-experience dependent while macrostructure is a relatively language-general, transferable narrative framework - The article organizes narrative skill into two levels: microstructure, covering "language-specific features such as syntactic complexity and lexical diversity," and macrostructure (story grammar), the
• Minai's order-disorder framework for aesthetic environmental design - Minai's framework treats the design of aesthetic environments as grounded in an order-disorder continuum rather than in formal rationality alone.
• Mobile user typology as a candidate predictor in mobile learning adoption models, substituting for effort expectancy - The article proposes that the four-class mobile user typology derived from latent class cluster analysis — eclectic, Internet, basic, and offline entertainment users — be introduced into technology ad
• Model of bilingual education: outcomes as interaction of background, child input, and educational treatment factors - The paper integrates its two hypotheses into an overall model of bilingual education in which "educational outcomes are explained as a function of the interaction between background, child input, and
• Model of effective professional development: frequency of participation, content exposure, and pedagogical quality linked to instruction and innovation - The report presents a model of effective professional development built on a consensus view in the field.
• Modelability: designing learning ecosystems to support generalizable predictive models via three principles - Modelability is defined as "the extent to which a system is designed to support the development of models that are generalizable".
• Modelos externos e internos (vivenciales) como dos representaciones complementarias del ciclo día-noche - El artículo distingue dos representaciones del movimiento aparente del Sol: el modelo externo, en el que un observador fuera de la Tierra ve el planeta rotar con el Sol fijo, y el modelo interno o viv
• Models-based curriculum organization: introductory physics structured around a set of 27 models rather than a serial sequence of topics - CLASP organizes its one-year curriculum around a set of 27 models — collections of ideas and relationships among them that prove useful for making sense of, explaining, and predicting phenomena — rath
• Modernist responses to the postmodern challenge form three broad areas: orthodox, critical pedagogy, and performativity texts - On the right side of the debate field, the paper patterns modernist responses into three genres.
• Modified peer instruction answer-discuss-answer model for clickers in mathematics content courses - The article describes an answer-discuss-answer implementation "similar in nature to the modified peer instruction model (MPI) described by Milner-Bolotin et al.
• Molnar's random-sampling method: synthesis of rules and no-rules toward a higher order of symmetry - Vera Molnar's computer-based artistic method treats randomness as a viable approach to artistic expression rather than as chaos or disorder.
• Montclair conception of critical thinking as judgment supported by disciplinary canons - The Institute for Critical Thinking at Montclair State College defines critical thinking through its concern with judgment: students should see course content within a nexus of justification and appli
• Months of learning as a metric for communicating achievement gaps - Months of learning is a translation of test scores into an intuitive time-based unit, used to communicate how many months or years of schooling students appear to be behind.
• Moral Dimensions of Instructional Design - Osguthorpe and colleagues' argument that designing instruction is a moral endeavour, and their framework of five designer consciences (craft, membership, sacrifice, memory, imagination) developed thro
• MPSA Cone: a cone-shaped framework of three modes of problem-solving action (technical, interpretive, emancipating) - The MPSA Cone is a conceptual framework that maps three modes of problem-solving action onto a relationship cone.
• MS-BKT: a multistate knowledge tracing model with data-driven recency weights replacing the learning rate - MS-BKT is a knowledge tracing architecture that keeps BKT's HMM structure but makes two changes: the knowledge node expands from 2 to 21 states, and a recency weight parameter R replaces the transitio
• Multi-armed RCT design-based framework for examining multiple interventions in a single study - The report presents a design-based framework for multi-armed randomized controlled trials, which are "becoming increasingly common in social policy research to simultaneously examine the effects of mu
• Multi-competency framework linking academic and nonacademic competency indicators to postsecondary outcomes - The report organizes student competencies into several indicator categories—math skills, work habits, leadership skills, teamwork and other sports-related skills, and attitudes about whether luck or e
• Multi-grade charter high school model as a promising configuration for long-term attainment - The report highlights multi-grade charter high schools — those that "include grades 6-12, 7-12, or K-12" — as a school configuration associated in Chicago with substantial positive effects on ACT scor
• Multidimensional oral proficiency assessment framework grounded in communicative competence theory - The article operationalizes spoken competence as a set of distinct but interrelated component skills, building on communicative competence theory, which "identifies four components that sit beneath ef
• Multimedia learning theory: dual channels, limited capacity, and active selection, organization and integration - The article draws on multimedia learning research (Mayer, Sweller) to explain why multimedia presentations can outperform text.
• Multiple Intelligences Theory - Howard Gardner's theory holds that intelligence is not a single general capacity but at least eight relatively independent abilities, with individuals typically strong in some and weak in others.
• Multiple local coherences: stability of student thinking as sustained by real-time activity - This framework characterizes student understanding and behavior as multiple local coherences that are variable yet exhibit local stabilities.
• Multiple local conceptual coherences: student understanding as locally stable patterns requiring stability explanations - The framework holds that student understanding and behavior are variable yet exhibit stabilities local to moments and settings.
• Multiple-indicator latent-growth modelling (MLGM) as a framework for validating longitudinal achievement constructs - MLGM is a second-order latent growth model, a multivariate extension of the first-order latent growth curve model, in which observed indicators are item clusters (goal scores) rather than total scores
• Multisite randomized trials as a design for estimating both average effects and cross-site variation - The article presents multisite randomized controlled trials, in which "individuals are randomly assigned to alternative treatment arms within sites", as a design that can estimate both the cross-site
• Multivariate true score model for achievement and growth norms - The norming approach is "a model-based approach employing a multivariate true score model that factors out known imprecision of scores" from fall, winter, and spring test scores.
• Myness–Otherness dialogical framework of culture in EFL learning - The article frames culture as "a progression from monological to dialogical processes" in which learners recognize "Myness" and "Otherness" — the relationship between the individual's own cultural ide