Pollution phenomena are complex systems in which different parts are integrated by means of causal and temporal relationships. To understand pollution, children must develop some cognitive abilities related to system thinking and temporal and causal inferential reasoning. These cognitive abilities constrain and guide how children understand…

This paper advances the thesis that high level thinking in classrooms happens when students become conscious of experience and knowledge realities and decide to pursue them flexibly and creatively. The specific research focuses on the author's conviction that effective stimulators of student reflection will accommodate knowledge encounters that…

Recent research has begun to suggest that epistemological beliefs of students develop to a more sophisticated level with age and education, while other preliminary studies have found that community college students tend to have more naive beliefs about learning and knowledge than do students attending four-year colleges and universities. The…