The 1997 national summit on barriers to student learning led to a proposal for the creation of a policy-oriented coalition of organizations with a stake in addressing barriers to development, learning, and teaching. The School Mental Health Project/Center for Mental Health in Schools at the University of California, Los Angeles, offered to play a…

The chapters and essays in this book are drawn from the 1988 edition of "Play as a Medium for Learning and Development." The first chapter, "The Challenge of Educational Play," by Bernard Spodek and Olivia N. Saracho, is followed by two essays: (1) "Play and the Origin of Species," (Michael J. Ellis); and (2)…

A cognitive demands analysis of a learning technology, a term that includes the hardware and the computer software products that form learning environments, attempts to describe the types of cognitive learning expected of the individual by the technology. This paper explores the context of cognitive learning, suggesting five families of cognitive…

Effective individualized learning continues to be the primary educational goal of small-rural schools. Three thrusts towards individualized learning--non-graded instruction, an emphasis on basic skills, and socially relevant education--can be enhanced by instructional computing, the use of microcomputers to facilitate learning. However, most…

Past research indicates poor agreement about strategies people use to assess covariation between events. This research investigates method of assessment as one possible source of this low consensus. A set of problems was developed in such a way that different judgment rules would produce different decisions about the relationships between events.…

Four strategies used in judgment patterns were explored. Problem sets in which each solution strategy produces a unique solution pattern are depicted. Several experiments had been conducted using rules in this way with subjects from grade 4 through college. Problems were set in the context of concrete events which could be related, and subjects…

Findings from five related studies carried out in Tasmania, Australia in 1979-80 are summarized. The first study attempted to determine the memory capacity of a cross-sectional population of children aged 4-7, while the second study was designed to portray differences on a variety of mathematically related developmental tasks for the same…

Examined were the effects on children's learning and motivation of the embedding of instructional materials in various fantasy contexts. Students in the third grade worked with graphics commands from the LOGO programming language under one of three conditions. In a control condition, students were given a series of abstract problems characteristic…

One area explored in the second (in-depth) phase of the Learning in Science Project was "children's science," defined as views of the world and the meanings for words that children have and bring with them to science lessons. The investigation reported focuses on the concept of "light" held by 36 students. Data were obtained…

The Learning in Science Project established that children from a young age construct out of their everyday experiences views which they use to explain their world and that these views are remarkably resistant to replacement by scientifically more useful views. Although science lessons tend to be based upon activities which are designed by teachers…

The Learning in Science Project has adopted the view that science teaching might be improved if teachers can be given some appreciation of students' views of the world and the beliefs, expectations, and language that learners bring to new learning situations. This investigation focuses on the views that children (N=34) may have about rocks and…

This study examines the relationship between student misconceptions and learning by focusing on six fifth-grade students as they attempt to make sense of classroom instruction on light and seeing. Pretests, posttests, and classroom observation narratives served as student data. Pretests indicate that students held the misconception that sight is…

This document examines the differences of cognitive styles and how they pertain to student performance and effective teaching. Persons identified as "field-dependent" people are particularly attuned and differentially attend to the social dimensions of their environment. Due to this orientation, these persons appear to be more skillful at learning…

The literature of teacher supervision assumes that supervision should focus on the teacher and teacher behavior within the classroom setting. The administrative model of supervision, however, focuses on pupils and pupil learning and takes the school system as its setting. It makes teachers and supervisors partners in deciding how well the…

Eighty-eight classroom activities for use in introductory psychology courses at the secondary and college levels are described. Only a few of the activities require specialized laboratory equipment. Most do not. The activities are organized by the following areas: methodology, sensory processes and perception, learning and conditioning, memory and…