In November 2008 at Purdue University, the 2nd Workshop on Human Problem Solving was held. This workshop, which was a natural continuation of the first workshop devoted almost exclusively to optimization problems, addressed a wider range of topics that reflect the scope of the "Journal of Problem Solving." The workshop was attended by 35…

Wertsch's clarification of Vygotsky's claims about the role of social interaction in the development of children's thinking made an important contribution to educational research. Revisiting that clarification, I suggest that "talk" instead of "speech" best describes Vygotsky's concern with the functional dynamics of dialogue rather than the…

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…

Major themes from the previous light articles on literacy, reasoning, and education are highlighted. Common inferences about the needs for organizational change, loosening of governmental rules and controls, and field-initiated research are described. The general exclusion of the affective domain from this discussions of higher order reasoning is…

A study of elementary school children's reasoning processes about every-day objects resulted in implications for the design of curriculum materials used in geography. (Author/KM)

This cross-national/cross-cultural study attempted to determine whether the development of the concept of space is universally invariant in sequence and rate, and whether the capability to deal with the world through two-dimensional reconstructions is innate or affected by experience in different cultures. (Author/RK)

Children's understanding of Euclidian space was investigated using three Piaget-type tasks to examine the ability of children to quantitatively locate a point in one, two, and three dimensions. Among the findings were that a disagreement exists between Piaget's data and the results of this study. (BT)

The first chapter of this publication, which focuses on a new definition and integration of thinking skills in the curriculum, presents a model that unifies current research and theory with a new understanding of the traditional notion of content and with a different approach to instruction. The model proposed in this chapter synthesizes recent…

One of the most typical ways in which people learn is by inferring general rules from examples. In recent years, significant progress has been made toward understanding how learning from examples can occur, determining when it does occur, and identifying conditions that promote it. This paper reviews these results and then suggests a program of…

The article describes a study to determine how instruction on the distinction between two theoretical ideas will affect the intake, interpretation, and recall of new information related to but different from the first. (Author/SB)

Three task context factors that form obstacles to generalizing logical reasoning strategies for adolescents are discussed. The relationship between these obstacle factors and Piagetian theory is explored. Findings suggest that it is possible to make some predictions about how and when logical mechanisms will be generalized to new situations.…

Presented is a theoretical, hierarchical model of abstraction designed to provide a systematic theoretical framework for future research into abstract learning. A test of the model with 149 subjects supported the assumption that the hierarchical model of abstraction is valid. (SL)

After opening with a 13-page review of the literature, the document's main emphasis is on the three experiments included in this report. The specific rationale, procedures, and results of the three studies comprise the major portion of the document. The general purpose of Experiment 1 was to ascertain the effects of prior relevant subject matter…

This study attempted to answer the following three questions: 1) Do students of grades four through seven perform equally well on both syncretistic understanding and logical thinking? 2) Do boys perform as well as girls on these two types of thinking? 3) Do students whose parents have a higher educational level perform as well as students whose…

Cites research findings to refute Piaget's contention of stages of cognitive development. Advocates continuous cognitive differentiation as a model. (CP)