Cognitive studies researcher, Samuel Wineburg, has conducted empirical studies over the past decade to compare the way historians think about primary and secondary sources with the thinking processes of high school students and teachers. Wineburg's research demonstrates the importance of domain-based or subject-specific thinking in the teaching…

This Digest provides educators with an overview of some important facets of cognitive science research and suggests implications for classroom assessment. Education researchers study the thinking of experts in various subject areas to understand the concepts and procedures that are the most important to teach and to help determine how to move…

Schemata, as defined recently by reading researchers, represent generic concepts which are stored in memory. They include underlying objects, situations, events, actions, and sequences of actions for use in interpreting new experiences. Research on schemata suggests that teachers need to pay attention to the types of questions they ask when…

Reviews recent ERIC materials on comprehension monitoring. (FL)

Foreign language aptitude was the subject of much research in the 1950s and has been the subject of intermittent research for the last 30 years. Aptitude is measured by the amount of time it takes an individual to learn. Foreign language aptitude appears to differ from general aptitude or intelligence. One theory states that foreign language…

Reports on programs and activities designed to teach thinking skills either as a separate school subject or as a strand in a content area. (FL)

At mid-twentieth century, the dominant framework for lesson design--the programmed instruction format--was derived from efforts to apply operant conditioning to human learning. Cognitive psychology soon offered an alternative view, represented by Robert Gagne's Events of Instruction, which became the dominant framework through the end of the…

Intended for junior high and high school writing instructors, this booklet provides prewriting activities designed to help students master the thinking strategies essential to effective written communication. The first portion of the booklet discusses theory and research on the role of thinking strategies in writing and gives an overview of the…

Reviews the use of the ERIC index term "Reader Text Relationship" with a view to deriving a tentative definition of the term. (FL)

Examines ERIC materials on the nature of and supporting the use of invented spelling in elementary school writing. (HTH)

Examples are provided in this discussion to indicate the nature of professional judgment in a teaching situation likely to be encountered by most child care workers or preschool teachers. Specifically, this predicament involves a problem in turn taking among 4-year-olds. As used here, the term "professional judgment" refers to cognitive…

Provides an overview of recent research on problem solving in speech communication. Discusses relevant documents under three categories: (1) conceptual developments, (2) social and affective correlates, and (3) potential teaching methods. (NKA)

Examines materials in the ERIC database that deal with the use of creative drama as a language arts teaching tool. Discusses the nature of creative drama and activities for the classroom. (HTH)

Examines materials in the ERIC database on the Suggestopedia method of instruction which bypasses the mind's barriers to learning and increases learning and retention. (HTH)

Teaching social studies skills such as problem solving, reasoning, thinking, and cognitive skills is the topic of this annotated bibliography. The following kinds and amounts of materials are cited: (1) 10 citations from "Resources in Education" (RIE); (2) 11 citations from "Current Index to Journals in Education" (CIJE); (3)…