This study addressed one aspect of scientific reasoning, the control of variables reasoning scheme. We explored whether a short intervention aimed at accelerating this reasoning scheme by CASE lessons would improve students' ability to apply this scheme in problems related to the biology curriculum. About 120 students from grade nine were assessed…

Heim's AH4 Test of General Intelligence, Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices, and two Piagetian formal operations tests (Shayer's Science Reasoning Tasks and Arlin's Test of Formal Reasoning) were administered to 459 15-year-olds attending Secondary three (grade nine) in Singapore. A hierarchical factor structure was found underlying all of…

Compares the relative effects of hands-on and teacher demonstration laboratory methods on declarative knowledge and procedural knowledge achievement. Reports that students in the hands-on class were better on the procedural knowledge test than students in the demonstration class. (Author/YP)

Discusses how stressful ninth grade is for adolescents, noting that adults' expectations of ninth graders' cognitive abilities may result in stressful experiences that are life-threatening for some (with suicide and drugs being common reactions). Suggestions are made for appropriate teacher education courses, curriculum materials, and…

Confirmatory Factor Analysis was used to test first- and second-order factor models on cognitive abilities and their invariance across male and female samples. Subjects were a stratified random sample of 234 male and 225 female 15-year-old students in Singapore attending Secondary 3 (the equivalent of grade 9). Four first-order factors were found…

Higher order cognitive development and success in the study of high school mathematics and science require an understanding of rational number concepts and facility with proportional reasoning and computation. Proportional reasoning is an essential schema for developing formal operational thought. This study involving 16 ninth-grade students was…