A 40-item free response test on signed-number subtraction was administered to 172 eighth graders. Their responses are viewed as consisting of two different components, the sign and absolute value. Each component is scored zero for wrong or one for correct, yielding a score of one only when both components have scores of one. By taking the values…

The projection of shadows task developed by Inhelder and Piaget was used to identify error patterns and solution strategies used by diverse populations in a sequence of proportion tasks. In Study A, two group tests were administered to 607 students from science and mathematics classes in grades 9 and 10. A sub-sample of 69 students was involved in…

A theory of how people learn certain procedural skills is presented. It is based on the idea that the teaching and learning that goes on in a classroom is like an ordinary conversation. The speaker (teacher) compresses a non-linear knowledge structure (the target procedure) into a linear sequence of utterances (lessons). The listener (student)…

Early reading should be studied from three perspectives: the function of print, the form of print, and the conventions of print. In so doing, it may be possible to avoid some of the hazards that have plagued the field, such as unsubstantiated assumptions about beginning reading and how it should be taught, erroneous beliefs that maturation plays…

This paper is an attempt to show what parameters come into play when dealing with the problem of difficulty in foreign language learning. After subjecting the hierarchy of difficulty set up by R.P. Stockwell and J.D. Bowen to a critical examination, the author discusses various parameters such as individual and national difficulties, the…