This article emphasizes the need to encourage undergraduate students to develop arguments, which involves enhancing their analytical skills and capacity for critical thinking, across disciplines regardless of level. It argues that these skills, required by the Quality Assurance Agency's (QAA) benchmarks, are developed not by instruction, but by…

Argues that reasoning is not governed by mental logic or models. Proposes new operational semantic theory, in which reasoning is based on children's operational understanding of key terms in a given problem. Reports results of a study of class inclusion in which dramatic differences in performance were found as the result of linguistic context.…

Specific modes of formal reasoning and measurements of principled moral reasoning ability were obtained from 99 10th-grade students. Hierarchical relationships were found amoung variables with combinatorial and correlational reasoning accounting for 22 percent of the variance in principled moral reasoning. Theoretical and educational implications…

Examined children's ability to settle causal relations and their capacity to make conclusions based on certain experiences and representations. Found that preschool children have a solid explanatory basis for their everyday life, within which facts are not generally accepted but are interpreted through a certain "logic," and the motives…

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…

Assessed was the level of thinking of 140 students who had been placed in developmental algebra as entering college freshmen. Scores on the Group Assessment of Logical Thinking, Scholastic Aptitude Tests, college placement tests; high school grade point average, and developmental algebra final grade were analyzed. Group characteristics are…

Two experiments investigated kindergarten through fourth-graders' and adults' ability to evaluate the certainty of deductive inferences, inductive inferences, and guesses, and explain the origins of inferential knowledge. Findings indicated that children rated their own deductions as more certain than guesses, but when judging another person's…

Children's analogical reasoning has traditionally been measured by classical four-term analogy tasks or problem-solving tasks. Current theories of analogical development and the evidence on which they are based are reviewed. It is concluded that structural views of analogical development are wrong, and knowledge-based accounts of what develops are…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of an eclectic thinking processes model on the logical reasoning abilities of students in grades six through twelve. The experimental school consisted of 159 students whereas the control school had 111 students. The Group Assessment of Logical Thinking (GALT) was administered to the sample as…

Describes a stage structure concern for children and phonics. Discusses that among all of the cognitive concepts and abilities constructed by young children, quantitative operations are most closely associated with early successful use of phonics. (JK)

This study describes the relationship of two cognitive variables, logical thinking and disembedding ability, to learners' abilities to make conceptual shifts from less acceptable to more acceptable conceptual understandings of a physical phenomenon. The difference in the logical thinking and disembedding ability of students who exhibited different…

Examines the problem-solving strategies of experts and novices. Summarizes the overall performance of four experts and eight novices. Examines several protocols in depth in order to show how subjects introduced new terms and relationships during problem solving sessions. Compares the strategies of expert and novice problem solvers. (CW)

Described are inconsistencies, definitions, and examples and their complex relationship which can be used to interpret students' reactions to the geometric tasks used to investigate inconsistencies in student thinking. Discusses the nature of definitions, the value of precise vocabulary, the use and limitations of prototypes, and the power of…

Sex differences on Perry's stages of epistemological development were investigated in a study of 100 freshmen (50 men and 50 women) at a large midwestern university. A semi-structured interview probed six domains related to Perry's theory, including the role of the learner, instructor, and peers in the learning situation, the question of…

Reviews a monograph which addresses children's higher-order thinking skills. Suggests the following for teaching problem solving: identify and develop content-independent and content-dependent problem-solving skills, connect developed skills through workshop-style activities to subject discipline, and help students identify and reconstruct their…