Cognitive Diagnostic Assessment (CDA) is an alternative assessment which can give a clear picture of pupils' learning process and cognitive structures to education stakeholders so that appropriate instructional strategies can be designed to tailored pupils' needs. Coincide with this function, the Ordered Multiple-Choice (OMC) items were…

A study had been conducted in qualitative design employing phenomenology approach to examine the cognitive basis and the semantic structure of phenomena based reasoning of lower secondary school students in Ambon. The data of the study were collected by using a test. Phenomena stimulus of science was given to the informants in the form of…

This paper explores the role of diagrams and text in middle school students' understanding and visualisation of human body systems. We develop a common framework based on structure and function to assess students' responses across diagram and verbal modes. Visualisation is defined in terms of understanding transformations on structure and relating…

Examined children's ability to settle causal relations and their capacity to make conclusions based on certain experiences and representations. Found that preschool children have a solid explanatory basis for their everyday life, within which facts are not generally accepted but are interpreted through a certain "logic," and the motives…

Knowledge elicitation through programming was studied to determine students' intuitive ideas about motion. The subjects, 17-year-old sixth-form science students and 14-year-old third-form students, were asked to write expert systems programs about motion; and their interactions with their own knowledge were observed. The 17-year-old students had…

Describes two studies investigating the development of recursive thinking in 60 Dutch children five, seven, and nine years of age. The first study replicated earlier research employing a verbal production procedure. The second study used verbal comprehension procedures and concluded that development appears two years earlier than indicated by the…

Children's analogical reasoning has traditionally been measured by classical four-term analogy tasks or problem-solving tasks. Current theories of analogical development and the evidence on which they are based are reviewed. It is concluded that structural views of analogical development are wrong, and knowledge-based accounts of what develops are…

The developmental increase in the ability to solve problems is a puzzle. Does it come from basic changes in mental skills, or is it a matter of practice? This book from the Developing Child series synthesizes recent research examining children's problem-solving skills development. Chapter 1 presents the major themes: (1) there is increasing…