It is hypothesized that certain mental structures are related to certain teaching skills. These structures are identified as combinatorial logic, essential to planning lessons, and hypothetical reasoning, an important aid in analyzing lessons. These formal thinking abilities should result in greater improvement during practice and later teaching.…

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…

A cognitive or internal representation refers to an organized system of information which reflects certain, but not all, of the information about reality being represented. This paper considers various opinions, controversies, and debates about what representation is, how it comes about, and what forms of representation can be distinguished. The…

Examines two different types of human motivation, pragmatic and nonpragmatic. Experimental studies in preschool-age children in both the former Soviet Union and Western cultures are presented. Suggests that the two contrasting conceptions of human motivation lead to totally different practical strategies for transforming human motivation in…

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…

Investigated relationship of teachers' cognitive levels and cognitive level demand of textbooks in relation to students capability to learn biology. Based on findings, teaching units were designed to help science teachers acquire skills, use innovative formats of instruction for abstract topics, and develop logical thinking skills through biology…

A 2-year study at the University of Sherbrooke (Quebec) investigated the changes in six medical students' clinical reasoning processes as they participated in a problem-based learning (PBL) curriculum. In each year, students performed a think-aloud protocol with two medical case problems to solve, one in cardiology and one in urology. In the…