Suggests that science teachers provide the student with materials in abundance that are appropriate to his stage of cognition. (LS)

Focuses on cognitive style trends within a generational cross section of Mexican American children and compares their differences in field independence to a group of Anglo American children; eighty elementary school students randomly selected from four populations--(first, second, and third generation Mexican Americans, and Anglo Americans),…

Ninth-grade students were given a battery of cognitive aptitude tests and randomly assigned to verbal or figural mathematics instruction. Learning and retention were correlated with the aptitude measures and other fixed variables; regression analysis indicated the importance of memory, semantic factors, and sex difference. (SD)

Describes research studies stimulated by the concern for facilitation of logical operations in elementary school and junior high school children and based on the assumption that the level of reasoning used for inquiry and concept acquisition by every individual is substantially below his capacity. (PEB)

A system for categorizing components of geometry class discussions is described. The unit of observation is the teacher question; responses are coded at four cognitive levels. The system is easier to use than many in the literature; use of it can help teachers develop questioning techniques. (SD)

Selected research studies that explore the assumption that college science students operate at a formal cognitive level are presented in this information digest. Studies are reviewed that relate to the areas of: (1) formal thought (examining the relationship between measured formal thought and that required to understand formal college physical…

Preschool children, elementary school students, and adults participated in a study that examined various processes used to interpret contradictory communications. A screening test determined that all subjects were capable of discriminating between contradictory and congruent communications. Subjects were presented with contradictory verbal-facial…

Comparisons of expert and novice problem solving in physics have helped characterize some of the key features of expert behavior. There is considerable debate, however, as to whether these characteristics are specific to the field of expertise (physics) or exportable to other fields. While the question seems difficult to answer in general, at…

A study examined the spelling of reading disabled (RD) and average ability students within the context of the developmental lag hypothesis, which was then contrasted with a developmental difference hypothesis. Subjects were 38 regular class third graders and 18 average intelligence fifth graders receiving resource room assistance for reading…

The field of the explicit teaching of thinking skills has attracted renewed and growing interest in education since the late 1970s. Much of this movement has its roots in earlier works in education, philosophy, and psychology. Writers in the fields of elementary/secondary education, curriculum, cognitive psychology, epistemology, and teacher…

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…

Freedom is subject to a variety of conceptions in life because people think of it from where they are in life. Psychological literature contains a great deal about freedom but it is almost always found under the rubric of freedom versus determinism. This study examined the concepts of freedom in subjects (N=450) who ranged in age from 7 to 21…

This paper deals with questions having to do with the nature and effects of teachers' beliefs about schooling, and to the psychological relationship between theory and practice. It is posited that teachers' beliefs are likely to have a profound influence on their actions. A critical analysis of current school performance and teacher education…

Previous research by Maratsos found that 3-year-olds were more accurate than four and 5-year-olds in selecting 'big' rectangles or animals when choosing between pairs of stimuli. A study then investigated the nature of the previous experiments themselves, particularly the procedures the researcher followed and the possible inferences which he drew…

A series of studies was conducted over a three-year period to determine whether the teaching technique developed in the 1960s called "inquiry training" is effective for teaching problem-solving, thinking, and/or decision-making skills. (Inquiry training is a process in which students are provided with a puzzling situation, are given the…