There is a need for robust evidence about which educational interventions work in preschool to foster children's cognitive and socio-emotional learning (SEL) outcomes. Lab-based individually randomized experiments can develop and refine such interventions, and field-based randomized experiments (e.g., cluster randomized trials) evaluate their…

While the concept of objectives is widely used in many applied fields of instruction, the systematic derivation and application of objectives for learning and instruction is a key feature of systematic instructional design. However, the treatment of objectives and the terminology surrounding them is sometimes nebulously employed. This article…

Overall, subjects performed significantly better on items which corresponded to the objectives they had been provided; subjects had previous experience using instructional objectives. (Author/SP)

Research and development strategies designed and implemented at the Wisconsin Research and Development Center for Cognitive Learning and the Southwest Regional Laboratory are discussed in papers by the directors of each and by members of the R & D Center staff. These papers further give examples of the research and development activities underway…

Presents information gained from a study designed to evaluate the effectiveness of providing students with behavioral objectives, with a secondary purpose being to evaluate achievement results across the first four levels of Bloom's taxonomy of educational objectives. No significant differences were found between knowledge and comprehension or…

Describes effects of study time on acquisition retention processes in a general biology course designed for female freshmen and sophomores in high and low analytic-ability groups. Concluded the presence of positive reinforcement, expecially at high analytic level. (CC)

The study attempted to assess student learning and retention in physics following various types of help sessions based on objective-referenced diagnostic tests. Students from an undergraduate physical science course were assigned to one of four treatment groups or a control group. The four treatments consisted of help sessions, each with a…

The purpose of the study was to investigate differences in learning as attributed to the instructional treatment of behavioral objectives of students in a general physical science laboratory. It was hypothesized that there would be no significant difference in the achievement of students in physical science who were exposed to laboratory methods…

This study was designed to examine the effects of two factors on the delay behavior of six year old children, a large percentage of whom had not yet attained temporal operations. The subjects consisted of 60 black, first grade children from a lower class urban neighborhood school. The experimental design was a 2x3 factorial with the first factor…

This study was designed to see if objectives accompanying test items increased cognitive learning. The results indicate that objectives accompanying pretest items facilitate student study and preparation for posttests, but objectives accompanying posttest items inhibited performance. (BR)

The nature of controversial programs is discussed, including problems that such programs pose for evaluators and suggested solutions for the problems. Controversial programs are likely to generate news-media attention, internal conflicts (i.e., involving the program and evaluation staffs) and external conflicts (i.e., involving various advocacy…

This study was undertaken to determine whether hierarchically structured problem situations could be developed and used to identify where individual solutions to problems in elementary physics are interrupted and whether examination of student approaches to problem situations would be useful to physics teaching. A random sample of 26 students…

Presented is a study to investigate the usefulness of autobiographies of scholars, artists and scientists as instructional resources for general education objectives. A theoretical discussion in which a rationale for the usefulness of autobiographical materials in general education was developed. This led to the formulation of a Schema of General…

Investigated was the effect of systematically combined high and low level cognitive objectives upon the acquisition of science learning. An instructional unit based on a Biological Sciences Curriculum Study (BSCS) Inquiry Slide Set (structure and function, control of blood sugar, a homeostatic mechanism) was chosen because it included stimuli for…

Reviews several schemes for organizing science laboratory objectives and activities and for analyzing several techniques designed to measure these laboratory outcomes. The need for further study and analysis of psychomotor behaviors in science education is emphasized. (HM)