Purpose: While the natural expectation is that students seek greater depth of learning as they develop intellectually during their studies, some research calls this into question and even suggests that student learning can become shallower from year to year. The present study aims to investigate the relative depth of students' learning at…

This article examines responses of 13 preservice students to a mentoring program during their junior year. Throughout the first two terms of a five semester teacher education program, senior physical education specialists agreed to mentor them (in pairs or trios) relative to their development. This qualitative analysis included collection of…

This article presents a marital horizon theory of emerging adulthood that posits that young people's perceptions of marriage are central factors in determining subgroup differences in the length of emerging adulthood as well as the specific behaviors that occur during this period in the family life cycle. The model was tested with a sample of 813…

The ideas presented in this lecture are based on the observation of processes of construction and consolidation of knowledge by individual students learning in groups within classrooms along a sequence of activities. Whereas the uniformity of the basic elements used to describe the knowledge construction processes may be seen as inclusive, there…

This study, based on constructivist learning theory, examined how effectively preservice chemistry teachers (N = 43) can be educated to think flexibly and to reorganize their thinking in a way that may complement diverse ways students approach the subject domain. The teacher's cognitive structure was assessed prior to and after a conceptual change…

A content analysis of interviews with an ethnically diverse group of 202 children aged 6 to 10 describes what children think racism is, and examines associations between age, ethnicity, and children's thinking about racism. Children's narratives capture many dimensions of racism, including stereotypes, prejudice, discrimination, and ethnic…

Critical review of previous techniques for the measurement of an individual's self-concept (SC) is a necessary prelude to the development of more adequate methodologies. This paper focuses on recent methodological innovations in the study of the self, namely, those derived from cognitive social psychology. A view of the self as a cognitive…

It has been argued that battered women who kill their abusers represent a special class of defendants being unfairly treated in the legal system. As a result, commentators have argued for reforms to permit the judicial system to respond more fairly. Researchers have investigated the influences of these prescribed legal modifications and the…