Discusses ways to devise training methods to improve students' learning abilities, specifically in rote recall, evaluation of the learning task, summarization, and learning from the text. (EF)

The first section of this report reviews traditional memory studies, which have provided much of our information concerning memory development. Major strengths and weaknesses of memory-development studies are illustrated by comparison with recent research into children's problem-solving skills. The report concentrates on one area of general…

The history of basic research in the area of memory development is briefly reviewed as part of an attempt to illustrate how basic research can inform educational practice. The historical overview is supplemented by more detailed consideration of a few prototypical research studies. This is followed by a description of the progress, problems, and…

This report focuses on the development of general problem-solving skills which are subsumed under the general heading of metacognition: in particular, the skills of predicting, checking, monitoring, reality testing, and coordinating and controlling deliberate attempts to learn or solve problems. The report is organized in five sections: an…

The ability to select (a) suitable retrieval cues and (b) the main ideas of prose passages was examined in college students and in school students between fifth and twelfth grades. The ability to select the main elements of texts improved over the entire age range studied and was not affected by experience studying and recalling the passage.…

Describes five studies in which the learning and transfer abilities of two- and four-year-old children were examined on a task that required them to combine two separately learned solutions to reach a goal. (HOD)

The strategies of children and college students were examined as they attempted to study texts. College students, under various intentional learning instructions, displayed a repetitive diagnostic pattern. Following extended study they improved recall of important, but not unimportant, elements of texts. Eleventh and twelfth graders conformed to…

Two experiments concerned with memory and comprehension of prose passages were conducted with children from second through seventh grade. In both experiments the major variable was the provision of appropriate frameworks for comprehending ambiguous sections of the passages. In the initial experiment, recognition of theme-congruent and…

Available from: Ablex Publishing Corporation, 355 Chestnut Street, Norwood, New Jersey 07648. Two groups (high and low functioning) of educable mentally handicapped children consisting of 70 Ss' average age 127 months' were tested for strategies in their approach to memory and problem solving tasks and for their responsiveness to strategy…

Focusing on how teachers can devise instructional routines to help students learn to learn, this paper discusses mechanisms for training students to devise their own strategies for learning. Because of the dominance of deliberate memory strategies in training research, the paper begins with a brief consideration of such literature, then proceeds…

Psychological theories have long had a pronounced effect on the diagnosis and instruction of children with learning problems. Traditional theorists emphasized the centrality of global processes assumed to be common to most if not all cognitive tasks. These processes were quite distant from those involved in traditional academic activities, making…

In an effort to validate dynamic assessment methods influenced by Vygotsky's (1978) definition of zones of proximal development (an indicator of readiness), three sets of experiments addressed two goals: the development of diagnostic assessment methods and the use of diagnostic results to guide the design of instructional programs. The first two…

Drawing upon Piagetian and Vygotskian developmental theories, philosophical examinations of the nature of argument and explanation, analyses of classroom and Socratic dialogues, and cooperative classroom structures, this paper examines how cooperative learning can influence individual knowledge acquisition. The paper first reviews some of the…