The goal of this article is to identify and disseminate several important messages from recent research on formal thought. Reasoning by adolescents, measurement of Piagetian formal reasoning, the importance of additional factors, stages, and working memory are discussed. (MNS)

Investigates the influence of five cognitive variables on high school students' performance on balancing chemical equations by inspection. Reports that reasoning, restructuring, and disembedding variables could be a single variable, and that working memory capacity does not influence overall performance. Results of hierarchical regression analysis…

The goal of this paper is to sketch the epistemological roots of constructivism, to clarify certain implications of Piaget's constructivist theory for science education, and to explicate the issues surrounding a specific research study and its replication. Constructivist epistemology is described in terms of its emergence from rationalist,…

Examines 11 elementary science texts in terms of conceptual structure and reasoning demands using concept maps. Reports that (1) the conceptual structures vary widely across texts; (2) most of the structures are well defined; and (3) the reasoning demands are above the developmental capabilities of most of primary-level children. (Author/YP)