Investigated the emergence of class and propositional reasoning skills as a function of the developing ability to coordinate increasingly complex negation and affirmation operations with children from grades 1, 3, 5, and 7. Found that children's reasoning follows a logical development sequence and that different groups of items account for…

The development of children's causal knowledge is investigated by analyzing changes in the content and form of the explanations they generate across the age span of three to nine years. The balance of incremental versus fundamental change and the forms each takes in children coming to understand the working of gears are examined. Three phases of…

In two parallel one-year studies, solution strategies for subtraction number facts and achievement patterns of matched groups of first graders in two different instructional programs were examined. Significant differences between groups were found favoring the strategy approach. (Author/CW)

Investigated was the learning of the mathematical uses of "more,""fewer," and "less" at a very early stage in the development of ideas. (CW)

This paper examines research studies that have concluded that elementary school children can learn more difficult and abstract social studies concepts than are taught in the traditional social studies curriculum. Research studies that focus on constraints on cognition, the use of embedded concepts, and understanding knowledge restructuring and…

Assesses the influence of grade and reading competence on inner-city Black children's sequence memory and use of organization in recall. Suggests that primary teachers should shift from literal decoding practice to providing semantic organizers and emphasizing interrelationships between words. The development of such basic cognitive skills…

This research investigates the development of analogy, in particular, the study of the development of systematicity in analogy. Systematicity refers to the mapping of systems of mutually constraining relations, such as causal chains or chains of implication. A preference for systematic mappings is a central aspect of analogical processing in…

Describes the characteristics of progressive schematization with regard to column multiplication and column division. Contrasts this with column arithmetic based on progressive complexity. Presents a summary of research data concerning column arithmetic. (TW)

Discusses theories of how children represent the environment in their memory with reference to recent empirical evidence. States that children are more competent at recalling a route than has been assumed previously and that there are age-related differences in children's ability to select landmarks along a route. (Author/CW)

Documents the patterns of coherence and persistence in energy conceptions. Describes the derivation of the Interview Vee technique and the procedure for putting an interview on the Vee. Discusses the production of Vee maps to help understand childrens' learning of concepts. (CW)

Reports a study designed to identify 9 and 11 year olds' ways of drawing nets of solids and to provide opportunities for them to reflect on their models in whole class discussions. Results indicated that children's views of solids' nets progressed from more global and holistic to more quantitative and analytic. (MDH)

Reviews recent research in the area of mathematical understanding and compares and contrasts it with a model formulated for the growth of understanding. Uses the analysis of a transcript from an interview with an eight-year-old boy to illustrate the power of the model to describe and map the growth of his mathematical understanding. (18…

The conceptual frameworks of Thai children (n=48) related to causes of health and sickness were analyzed using the "Interview-about-Instances" and the "Conceptual Profile Inventory" techniques. The results indicate that Thai schoolchildren hold considerable personal knowledge about the causes of health and sickness that does…

An understanding of fraction addition can be thought to involve two quantitative ideas: (1) the understanding that adding to an original quantity increases its size, and (2) a sense of how much increase occurs. Both of these ideas should underlie or inform a child's approach to problems involving fraction addition and thereby constrain the class…

Discusses the French educational reforms between 1969 and 1985, examining their effects on the teaching of history and geography, which are mandatory throughout pre-university education. Writing for elementary school teachers, Marbeau considers the construction of knowledge in children aged 6 to 11, in history, geography, and the social sciences.…