The construct of metacognition appears in an ever increasing number and range of contexts in educational, developmental, and cognitive psychology. Can it retain its status as a useful construct in the face of such diverse application? Or is it merely an umbrella term for diverse mental phenomena that are loosely if at all connected? Here I argue…

In the "Republic," Plato developed an educational program through which he trained young Athenians in desiring truth, without offering them any knowledge-education. This is not because he refused to pass on knowledge but because he considered knowledge of the Good as an ongoing research program. I show this by tracing the steps of the…

Several proposals for addressing religious literacy or including religious content in American public schools point to potential advantages for intellectual and moral development. These proposals include moral arguments, which suggest that religious literacy is an individual and social good. Although the proposals selected for this analysis span…

Information flows continuously in the environment. As we attempt to do something, our senses receive large volumes of information. In any conversation, messages are exchanged rapidly. To understand meaning, we have to focus, record, choose and process relevant information at every moment, before it is displaced by other information. Often,…

This study compared the relationships of self-efficacy and reasoning ability to achievement in introductory college biology. Based on the hypothesis that developing formal and postformal reasoning ability is a primary factor influencing self-efficacy, a significant positive correlation was predicted between reasoning ability and degree of…