Discussed are preservice elementary teachers' misconceptions and inconsistent beliefs about multiplication and division with decimals. Sources of inconsistencies and recommendations for overcoming inconsistencies are included. (KR)

Children's magical explanations and beliefs were investigated in two studies. Found that many four-year olds view magic as a plausible mechanism, yet reserve magical explanations for certain real world events that violate their causal expectations. Parents and culture at large may at first actively support magical beliefs whereas peers and schools…

Examined the developmental sequence through which adolescents progress in solving a physics problem (balance beam ratio and proportion) and a social problem (predicting the behavior of a story character). Although most of the 9- through 19-year-olds performed at predictable and similar developmental stages on each task, a minority were more…

The reasoning abilities to be expected of the concrete operational and formal operational student, the percentage of secondary science students that are capable of each type of reasoning pattern, and effective strategies to teach science to concrete reasoners are described. Implications for curriculum development are discussed. (KR)

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of three instructional methods and conceptual systems orientation on achievement in a freshman general chemistry laboratory course. Traditional approach, learning cycle, and computer simulations are discussed. (KR)

The Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised (WAIS-R) and the Cognitive Test for the Blind were used to compare verbal and nonverbal abstraction ability of adults who became blind before age 2 or after age 5 (when expressive language would have been developed). No significant differences were found, but variability of scores on the WAIS-R…

A classroom cognitive intervention model for adolescents and adults who are deaf is described. The model provides mediated learning experiences whereby a person assists the learner in interpreting experience and learning problem-solving strategies. The program, entitled instrumental enrichment (IE), is based on the following principles: IE uses a…

Between 1985 and 1988 eight colleges implemented a "Thinking Across the Curriculum" program and a procedure for assessing the impact of the program on the cognitive development and thinking skills of students. One hundred and twenty faculty members participated in the project and approximately 1,800 students studied in courses developed…

This report describes the "Differential Coursework Patterns (DCP) Project," which developed the Cluster Analytic Model (CAM) to look at effects of different patterns of college coursework on the general learned abilities of students as determined by such measures as the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) General Test. The model looks for…

This digest considers the role of personal computers in the education of gifted students. There is evidence that students are working "smarter," whether they are learning and using more information, understanding key concepts and relationships better, or developing higher level thinking skills. Research findings concerning the specific…

This study investigated the development of students' abilities to integrate information in stories as an aspect of reading comprehension. Students aged 8, 11, 14, and 18 judged the importance of key statements, which varied in their causal relations within an episode, between episodes, and in a higher-order structure, yielding three levels of…

This paper discusses ways that students can better be taught to think. It argues that poor/low-achieving students served by Chapter 1 of the Education Consolidation and Improvement Act of 1981 could genuinely profit from instruction on thinking and that, for maximum impact, such instruction should be introduced as a course in itself, separate from…

In order to directly relate research on children's thinking to curriculum development in the social studies, this study approximates the conditions and substances of daily classroom life and examines the levels of abstraction in children's thinking about complex social problems. The subjects include 210 boys and girls in equal numbers in grades…

Middle and upper class 3- and 4-year-old children were exposed to three consecutive 5-week treatment conditions in the naturalistic setting of a half-day laboratory nursery school program. During the first treatment condition, the teacher emphasized low level cognitive questions; during the second, high level cognitive questions; and during the…

Discussed are some situations students face that result in cognitive conflict, possible sources of these conflicts, and strategies which students use to resolve, remove, or circumvent them. A global account for observed systematic errors is offered based on a general problem-solving rule called the "Matching Rule." (KR)