A large proportion of college students majoring in science are unable to translate even simple sentences into algebraic equations. Given the following sentence, "There are six times as many students (S) as professors (P) at this university," 37% of 150 freshmen engineering students in a study conducted in 1981 by Clement, Lockhead, and Monk wrote…

Effective teaching strategies must be developed to help students bridge the gap between concrete operational thinking and full formal thinking in the content areas. Reading for meaning requires readers to categorize subjects, recognize relationships, develop and maintain a sequence of thought, recognize and understand inferences, and draw…