This paper draws attention to the literature in the areas of learning, specifically, constructivism, conceptual change and cognitive development. It emphasizes the contribution of such research to our understanding of the learning process. This literature provides guidelines for teachers, at all levels, in their attempt to have their students…

This article emphasizes the need to encourage undergraduate students to develop arguments, which involves enhancing their analytical skills and capacity for critical thinking, across disciplines regardless of level. It argues that these skills, required by the Quality Assurance Agency's (QAA) benchmarks, are developed not by instruction, but by…

Reviews Karmiloff-Smith's "Beyond Modularity," suggesting that her work highlights phenomena that seem counter intuitive when regarded from current developmental frameworks, and advocates that understanding them requires more complex perspectives than can be supported by either extreme nativist or domain-general models of cognitive…

The science learning cycle developed by Robert Karplus and others in the 1960's has been a useful model for many science teachers and researchers. This model stresses the use of structured inquiry to organize knowledge acquisition and problem solving. Recent research in the cognitive science tradition, however, has shown that learning and problem…

Comments on Flavell's paper (PS 522 962) presented in the same issue. Stresses some of the positive aspects of preschoolers' conception of thinking, and raises questions about the relatively negative portrait of young child's introspective abilities. Discusses evidence of introspection among preschoolers, and underlines the special, and…

Comments on Flavell's paper in this issue. Examines the paper's findings on three different aspects of children's knowledge about thinking: their ability to differentiate thinking from other activities, their awareness that thinking is always going on in people's minds, and their capacity for introspection into their own thinking. Argues that…

The purpose of this paper is to familiarize readers with Vygotsky's theory on verbal regulation of thinking skills, to describe related research and applications of the theory, and to explore its relevance for researchers, parents, and educators. (MT)

This article presents a new method of inferring students' cognitive structures and their development. A modification of Reitman and Rueter's "ordered tree technique," the method generates a structure that displays important relationships assumed to be in a student's memory about concepts taken from a specific field of study. (Author/LMO)

In a study of 151 college freshmen of both sexes, cognitive complexity and learning orientation revealed gender-related qualitative differences within parallel cognitive structures. Different cognitive structures were accompanied by different learning orientations. (Author/TE)

Reports results of 14 studies on children's knowledge about thinking. Suggests that preschoolers appear to know that thinking is an internal mental activity that can refer to real or imaginary objects or events. However, preschoolers are poor at determining when a person is and is not thinking. This shortcoming is considerably less evident in…

Information-processing students solving problems in the 1960s and 1970s accepted the tradition of early experimental psychology in concentrating primarily on the study of "knowledge-lean" tasks in which competence can usually be acquired over short periods of learning and experience. In recent years, experts have examined knowledge-rich…

Two experiments examined whether 40 infants would reenact what an adult did or intended to do: (1) infants observed an adult unsuccessfully attempt to complete 4 target acts; and (2) children observed a mechanical device tracing the adults' actions. Infants could infer adults' intentions and imitate target acts, suggesting that children can…

This paper summarizes the recent work of the Maryland Physics Education Research Group on analyzing student learning in introductory university physics. This work is carried out in a model of student thinking and learning based on principles from cognitive science. The model permits a better understanding of, and diagnosis for, the state of both…

Using similar research in Britain as a basis, a study in New Zealand explored schema learning in young children. The primary purpose of the study was to determine the effects of a curriculum intervention designed to increase the richness and amount of stimulation teachers and parents give 4-year-olds in response to observations of children's…

Collected qualitative data through interviews and triad elicitation with 5-year-olds in London to determine children's current knowledge and understanding of their "making" activity and of Lego construction kit components. Data provided triangulation for another study that found that young children could achieve a great deal with…