It has been well established that all learning is developmental, and involves reorganization and continual reconstruction of complex structures that begin to develop at an early age. This theory can best be applied to instructional practice if cognitive development is conceptualized as a hierarchical process rather than as a continuum. (Author/GC)

In this article, some of the ways in which thinking about chaos theory can help teachers and student-teachers to accept uncertainty and randomness as natural conditions in the classroom are considered. Building on some key features of complex systems commonly attributed to chaos theory (e.g. complexity, nonlinearity, sensitivity to initial…

This paper focuses on the changes in thinking involved in the transition from school mathematics to formal proof in pure mathematics at university. School mathematics is seen as a combination of visual representations, including geometry and graphs, together with symbolic calculations and manipulations. Pure mathematics in university shifts…

This article is based on a doctoral dissertation submitted to the Department of Psychology, University of Michigan. (MH)

Presents an overview of Pascual-Leone's Theory of Constructive Operators and discusses its implications for issues in developmental psychology. The author concludes that the theory may resolve several anomalies in cognitive- developmental and learning theory approaches to development. One potential problem, the objectivity of task analysis, is…

Discusses whether educational technology has kept pace with recent developments in the related fields of psychology and communication science. Addressed are several areas in cognitive psychology: the process of selective perception, semantic encoding, the effects of previous learning, and the influence of metacognitlon. (RAO)

This study demonstrates that, given the assumption that the child does have some understanding of both height and amount, many nonconservers do give correct reversal judgments for both. Also, reversibility data from this study do not support the theory that a new stage appears when water conservation judgments appear. (Author/ED)

Several epistemic formulations have been advanced to explain cognitive development. Many writers have divided the field of psychology into three basic underlying models: the mechanistic, organismic, and dialectic models. An examination of epistemic positions reveals five broadly defined positions on how behavior develops within a given organism.…

This article discusses cognitive development as a primary educational objective and focuses on three cognitive processes: the prepared mind, the attending mind, and the processing mind. (PD)

Excerpt of a PhD dissertation submitted to the New York University School of Education

This paper is a refinement of a model of conceptual learning and development presented initially as the Presidential Address to Division 15, Educational Psychology, of the American Psychological Association in September 1971 at Washington, D.C. Thus it supersedes the initial formulation in explicitness and detail. This paper explains the nature of…

Maintains that Teyler and Fountain's presentation (1987) contains several limitations, namely, that the authors do not (1) distinguish between learning and memory, nor between storage and retrieval; (2) address the role of knowledge-based influences in memory and learning; or (3) employ concepts that can accommodate developmental phenomena in the…

A cognitive interpretation is suggested to account for the inverse relation between availability of social stimuli and their subsequent efficacy in a reinforcing role. In this interpretation, the emphasis is on the interpersonal nature of the interaction between the child and the reinforcing person. (Author)

Physics concepts, developed in young children, are compared to scientific concepts which have best withstood revolutions" in science. (Author/CP)