The value of higher education, and particularly the four-year undergraduate venture influenced from the liberal arts tradition, is largely framed around the impact it has on a broad range of skills and dispositions that serve to enhance human flourishing. Employers and society more broadly can benefit from individuals who are committed to careful…

Ritual has played an integral role in human development and socialization throughout history. This paper seeks to highlight that role so that the importance of perpetuating ritual becomes obvious and necessary. The purpose of this paper is to re-iterate the significance of ritual in human development, education, and social improvement; discuss the…

Discusses the cognitive developmental understanding of empathy as role-taking, focusing on four different perspectives. Considers a theory of cognitive role-taking and issues about transformation. Addresses empathy in relation to identity formation and its contribution to self-understanding. Offers implications for educating adults for empathy and…

Tested children's ability to compute perspectives from locational and structural descriptions of scenes. Children from 4 to 10 years of age were given perspective-taking problems that involved abstract multicomponent scenes; responses entailed the reconstruction of alternate views. Four-year olds were unsuccessful; 10-year olds were successful…

Used a data analytic strategy that was novel to the M-space literature to examine the mental capacity prerequisites of social-cognitive development of 99 students in grades one, three, and five. Used a structural equations analysis to determine whether M-power was a significant predictor of role-taking development. (RH)

Three developmental approaches to teacher education are examined in an effort to determine a coherent theoretical framework of criteria for evaluating the effectiveness of education programs. The first is discussed in terms of the development in a teacher of concern for student achievement and increasing willingness to be flexible in adapting new…

One of the continuing problems for public education has been the absence of effective programs to support teachers during their induction into the profession. Describes an intervention program coordinated by mentor counselors and mentor teachers along with preliminary qualitative and quantitative findings. (JBJ)

Classical and contemporary research studies were examined to develop a definition of wisdom and explore its constructs in human development and consciousness. First, wisdom was defined as an emergent characteristic of mature adults that is built upon intelligence, experience, and reflection and includes metaphysical and cognitive components.…

Traces the development of artistic ability in a six-year-old boy with autism and mild mental retardation. Addresses questions concerning autism and artistic development including whether intellectual realism is a necessary precursor to visual realism and whether a two-dimensional photographic memory is used as opposed to three-dimensional…