This paper presents a goal-based scenario approach to teaching introductory database concepts to undergraduates using two different scaffolding methods. One method, termed "worked-out examples," attempts to reduce extraneous cognitive load by requiring students to complete increasingly complex missing parts of worked out examples. The other…

This study investigates the influence of changes in the wording of simple addition and subtraction problems without affecting their semantic structure on the level of difficulty of those problems for first and second graders and on the nature of their errors. The objective is to contribute to a better understanding of the process of constructing a…

An exploration of children's responses to some of the Caldecott prize-winning books, using a Piagetian-type interview. An attempt is made to find out why some children are "turned off" by books that, from all ostensible evidence, are of high quality. (CS)

Comprehension of metaphor was examined in 36 children ranging in age from 55 months to 186 months. The subjects were audiotaped while answering questions about a target sentence that was contextually anomalous. Five pictures were drawn to accompany each story, two relating to the literal meaning of the target sentence, two to the metaphoric…

Three questions are addressed in this study: (1) what is the effect of additional, unexplained content on achievement and perception? (2) is the effect altered by time? and, (3) what is the relation between student achievement and student perception? It was determined that the effect on achievement was not significant but the effect on perception…

This study was concerned with children's ability to conserve spatial relationships among objects in different arrangements, in the presence of projected changes in the observer's visual field. The objectives were: (1) to determine the effects of varying types of arrangement and number of objects in the arrangement on perspective ability…

Reports three experiments with kindergartners and first graders which used one-trial multidimensional reasoning tasks like those of Toppino (Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, v30, p496-512, 1980). Feedback information and preliminary experience with simple forms of the task produced high performance levels, and verbal labeling in the…

In the first experiment, 16 kindergarten children were tested on vertical/horizontal and oblique discriminations in symmetrical and asymmetrical alignments. When stimuli were asymmetrically aligned, the former discrimination was learned as rapidly as the latter. The second experiment demonstrated that the influence of configurational cues in…

Infants 8.5 and 9.5 months of age were tested for ability to determine the location of an object hidden in one of two covered containers before their left-right positions were reversed. Only the older infants provided with different colored covers to their containers were able to do this task. (Author/DB)

The notion that a prerequisite for asking questions about new topic matter is some appropriate level of knowledge was tested. Learners with two levels of background knowledge using learning material with two levels of difficulty were studied. (SW)

Examined relations between algebraic word-problem attributes and students' strategies, errors, and problem difficulty. Found that constructed responses capture strategy formulation and high-level planning--as do traditional measures of quantitative reasoning--but are more sensitive to individual problem characteristics and procedural errors that…