A sixth-grade class investigated the ecologies of two local retention ponds over the course of one school year. In this context, instruction assisted development as students designed models of the pond in one-gallon jars and attempted to stabilize these jars in sustainable ecosystems that could be used to study questions about the ponds.…

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…

Teaching strategies are becoming increasingly oriented toward guiding students' knowledge construction through cooperative learning. Enhancing students' cognitive development is a priority; students must "learn how to think." Inquiry instruction provides students with tools to make decisions based upon available evidence and an opportunity to…