Reports and surveys by the U.S. government and international organizations have repeatedly acknowledged the achievement problem in math in K-12 regardless of various efforts (e.g., by the U.S. Department of Education) to diminish it. To address the problem in math achievement in K-12, teachers, scholars, and the U.S. government have developed…

At the beginning of preschool (M = 46 months of age), 197 (94 boys) children were administered tasks that assessed a suite of nonsymbolic and symbolic quantitative competencies as well as their executive functions, verbal and nonverbal intelligence, preliteracy skills, and their parents' education level. The children's mathematics achievement was…

This article offers teaching strategies in the dynamic assessment of the potential of students with autism to acquire and use multiple graphic symbol combinations for communicative purposes. Examples are given of the matrix strategy and milieu language teaching strategies. It also describes the Individualized Communication-Care Protocol, which…

Twenty-four psychotic children (5-15 years old) were required to represent absent objects (e.g. toothbrush) via pantomime after receiving verbal instructions or instructions accompanied by a model demonstrating the pantomime. (Author/CL)

Advocates the use, in the classroom, of a photograph of the planet Earth taken from space. Sees it as a powerful symbol for a unified world and its presence in the classroom as providing an expanded awareness of the unitary nature of the students' global home: one planet, populated by one human family. (KS)

This article presents a brief overview of the literature pertaining to the use of objects of reference by people with deaf-blindness. It suggests that the establishment of nonsymbolic object use in appropriate routines may facilitate the acquisition of the symbolic use of objects. (MDM)

The author emphasizes the importance of concepts and mathematical form in a discussion of understanding mathematics. (MN)

Argues that art education is basic to school learning because it develops three levels of visual communication skills: the use of visual symbols to communicate at a very general level; to communicate accurately and specifically; and to communicate uniquely and expressively. (Author/SJL)

Discussion about the nature and varieties of mathematical understanding is presented. Symbolic understanding is defined as a mutual assimilation between a symbol system and a conceptual structure, that is dominated by the conceptual structure. (MP)

Curriculum balance is a conception rooted in an understanding of the nature and scope of cognition. It is not the case that certain cultural forms, such as the arts, to name but one example, are affective and mathematics cognitive. They are all cognitive. (Author/IRT)

Discusses the four metaphoric modes of thinking (as opposed to analytic modes). These modes persist at all stages of cognitive maturity, yet there is a diminishing use of these modes, except symbolic abstract, in the schools as one goes up through the cognitive stages. (Author/IRT)

This article urges teachers to guide gifted students in constructing meaning through creating and viewing non-print texts. It discusses how visual images can be used to capture symbols of leadership, record and celebrate leadership in action, interpret the attributes of leadership in new ways, and recognize leaders in the community. (Contains one…

Eight severely retarded subjects (ages 9-22), four with functional language and four without, performed identity and nonidentity matching tasks employing objects, photographs, and line drawings. As representational complexity increased, greater difficulty in matching stimuli was observed in the nonfunctional language group, with line drawings…

Explores how auditory, visual, kinesthetic, and symbolic/abstract learning modalities can be applied to interpretive presentations to capture an entire audience. In addition to addressing diverse learning styles, the article discusses presentation outlines, making the concept personal, combining song, music, and drama, and using action rather than…

This paper discusses the benefits of teaching literature through levels of understanding so that teachers can more quickly and efficiently determine the operational levels of individual students. The seven levels of understanding and some of the generic questions by which they can be determined are: (1) perceptual level: "What happened, when,…