Noting evidence of continuity and progression in young children' thinking, this book explores the promotion of high-quality thinking and action in children ages 3 to 5 years. Some thoughts about children from birth to 3 years and from 5 to 8 years of age are also included as part of the discussion of continuity in teaching and learning. Throughout…

The academic standings of provisionally admitted high school graduates and matched controls (regular admissions) at a state university were analyzed after one to three years. The results revealed highly significant differences in favor of the controls. The criterion was academic status at the university. Analysis of covariance controlling the…

Three sections of the Graduate Record Examinations (GRE) Aptitude Test were reviewed before the introduction of the restructured test in October, 1977: research on (1) the GRE-Verbal section; (2) the GRE-Quantitative section; and (3) a planned third section, measuring analytical thinking skills. Research in all three areas focused on test…

A series of five experiments was designed and administered to 679 elementary and junior high school students over a 2-year period to test the relevance of Jean Piaget's concept of conservation to musical learning. Musical tasks consisting of stimulus patterns and systematic variations of these patterns were designed for each experiment, and…

Theoretical and empirical research derived from Piagetian theory is collected on the intellectual development of the elementary school child and his acquisition and utilization of conservation concepts. The articles present diversity of method and motive in the results of replication (validation studies of the description of cognitive growth) and…

Representational competence refers to the individual's capability to respond appropriately to external representations. For example, a child engaged in a grouping task may collect together all like objects even if the group contains varying representations of the object, including (1) the object itself, (2) a three-dimensional likeness of the…

A cognitive-based system of analysis of spoken discourse was designed to provide details about the way pupils think and talk about issues arising from prose material. Written and spoken responses were analyzed to examine the effects of intellectual ability, differences in the stimulus passage, and prior small group discussion. (Note: Page…

Describes the importance of learning to connect separate universes of knowledge into a coherent whole. It is a mistake to emphasize connecting schools to the Internet without considering the kinds of thinking processes students need in order to learn from the information they access. (LMI)

Compared the use of conditional logic in adult-adult and adult-child conversation. Results indicated that conversation patterns and inferences were similar except that children made fewer independent inferences and shifts in taxonomic level and responded more frequently to socially controlling statements than did adults. (AA)

Explores the role that symbolic-graphical calculators can play in the current calls for reform in the mathematics curriculum. Discusses symbolic calculators and graphing calculators in relation to problem solving, computational skills, and mathematics instruction. (MDH)

This study investigated the grouping effect on student achievement in a chemistry laboratory when homogeneous and heterogeneous formal reasoning ability, high and low levels of formal reasoning ability, group sizes of two and four, and homogeneous and heterogeneous gender were used for grouping factors. The sample consisted of all eight intact…

A model for the development of scientific reasoning in adolescents was formulated largely upon the basis of Piagetian theory. Included as potential determinants of scientific reasoning were experience, age, locus of control, field independence-dependence (FID), rigidity/flexibility, intelligence quotient (IQ), and sex. Causal relationships between…

The associations among cognitive automatization, abstract problem solving, and educational performance were studied using 127 fourth to ninth grade students. A number of measures of fast, automatic, and fluent performance (FAF measures) were used: writing the alphabet; reading from a word list; and mentally performing arithmetic operations. The…

Recall lists were presented to 40 black lower class and 40 white middle class children in this experiment. The purpose of the study was to examine a possible explanation of the relatively poor performance of black and lower class children on tasks requiring abstract learning abilities. It was reasoned that the threshold for the production of…

To assess children's ability to draw inferences from selections of children's literature and to measure the significance of various selected factors to this ability was the problem of this study. Children (432) were evenly divided among grades 4, 5, and 6 and randomly divided at each grade level into two equal groups, one of which read the…