Although exploring students' thought processes can be rewarding, most teachers rely heavily on reponses to tests and assignments that fail to disclose learners' thinking patterns. Concept maps grouping interrelated ideas can encourage students to demonstrate effective and meaningful assimilation of organized study areas. Includes five footnotes.…

This study compared effectiveness of cognitive modeling with and without verbalization in teaching 60 learning-disabled elementary students efficient questioning strategies. Results indicated that both groups showed significant reductions from pretreatment to posttreatment in the number of questions required but no effectiveness differential…

Focusing on techniques for teaching students to integrate diverse ideas at a deep level of cognitive processing, a study evaluated an idea integration package for teaching writing in the college classroom. Subjects, 29 college students from an introductory psychology class at a Utah university, were divided into two groups. The integration group…

Misconceptions interfere with the formation of new insights and provide a faulty foundation. This causes difficulty in the learning of new materials. Therefore, effective teachers strive to know which misconceptions students have, and then develop a plan by which these suspected misconceptions can be corrected or averted. This paper reports on an…

Provides an overview of the nature, purpose, and instructional research related to semantic mapping. Offers a vivid description of how semantic mapping was used in a secondary social studies classroom, including how the teacher and students viewed the method. Suggests ideas and resources for interested teachers. (MJP)

Presents the results of an experiment that evaluated the efficiency of analogy in the conceptual restructuring of a science topic. The experiment involved a fifth-grade class studying water and heat flow. Discovered that analogy can act as an effective trigger for restructuring knowledge. (MJP)

Asserts that the most effective use of schema theory in history instruction requires placing students in the decision- making roles of historical figures. A more detailed discussion of the same historical event follows this initial exercise. Students then compare their decisions with their historical counterparts. (MJP)

Explores the usefulness of an alternative writing approach using a spatial-verbal technique called node-link mapping. In this process the student diagrams nodes, which contain key ideas and propositions, and links, which convey relations such as, leads to, part of, and example. Includes diagrams and examples. (MJP)

Maintains that student-centered curriculum embodies the progressive and constructivist principles of active, participatory learning. Advocates emphasizing the importance of context as part of a constructivist approach. Includes instructional examples of connecting contextual information about artworks to constructivist activities. (MJP)

This book is the second in a four-book series on habits of mind. It translates a habits of mind approach to education into action using classroom-tested advice. Contributions come from practitioners in literature, math, music, foreign language, reading, character education, and social science. After "Series Foreword: Thinking on the Road of…