A review and conceptual analysis of the literature on the characteristics of students in Japan and of the factors influencing those characteristics was conducted. Information from both English and Japanese sources about cognitive, non-cognitive, and behavioral characteristics of students and factors influencing them was sought regarding students…

Classroom teachers frequently express concern that textbooks and other curriculum materials are too difficult for their students. The objectives of this investigation were to develop a method for scoring the Level of Abstraction (LOA) of science reading material, and explore its relationship with certain other known methods for assessing…

Higher order thinking skills are inevitably developed or exercised relative to some discipline. The discipline may be formal or informal, may or may not be represented in a school curriculum, or relate to a wide variety of domains. Moreover, the development or exercise of thinking skills may take place at differing levels of generality. This paper…