This brief suggests that during the past 2 decades, the skills needed to succeed in the workplace have changed significantly. Technical skills remain important, but, increasingly, employers recognize another category of skills crucial to a worker's ability to work "smarter, not harder." These "soft,""core,""nontechnical,""essential,""generic," and…

The goal of this guide is to provide resources for teachers and trainers to use in helping students improve their scientific thinking and problem solving skills in real-life situations. Each activity is characterized by inquiry-based learning, process skill development, and gender equity considerations. Topics for activities include problem…

This is volume 6 of the series of translations of books from the Soviet literature on research in the psychology of mathematics instruction and on teaching methods influenced by the research. This book contains both a theoretical examination of the connection between instruction and the development of children, and experimental data on a definite…

The Mathematics Education Research Group of Australia (MERGA) was officially constituted in 1980. In 1984, MERGA produced the first review of the mathematics education research carried out in that region. This book is the third in that series of research reviews. An overview provides the context in which the Australian research was conducted and…

The "Clipboard Connection" is a methodology to facilitate the rapid circulation of relevant pre-existing materials from Chapter 1 Technical Assistance Centers (TACs) to their clients, teachers of educationally disadvantaged children in resource centers. Each "Clipboard Connection" consists of a lead sheet summarizing the…

Calls for increased student involvement in mathematics classroom learning situations are due primarily to the recognition that a traditional lecture/demonstration format within school mathematics instruction is not effective in fostering and promoting students' problem-solving abilities, mathematical reasoning power, and mathematical communication…

This book describes the practice of using learner-centered software in special education. Following an introductory chapter, Chapter 2 provides a discussion of software that goes beyond drill and practice and at the same time fits easily into the existing subject areas of reading/language arts and mathematics. Chapters 3 and 4 discuss using word…

Research in this project studied cognitive processes involved in understanding and solving problems used in instruction in the domain of mathematics, and explored implications of these cognitive analyses for the design of instruction. Three general issues were addressed: knowledge required for understanding problems, knowledge of the conditions…

A study investigated the reason for the high performance of bilingual children on a syllogistic reasoning task. Thirty-nine Puerto Rican Spanish-English bilingual children in grades 3 through 6 were asked to solve problems in both languages. Response times were recorded, and the subjects were asked to justify their answers to assess to what extent…

A college English teacher, dissatisfied with the approach used in her composition classes and with its results, turned to the Outward Bound concepts of the German physician and schoolmaster, Kurt Hahn. These concepts include a belief in the value of creating adversity in order to overcome it, a belief that important things happen to people who are…

In order to investigate the nature of students' prior knowledge of current electricity and how they applied their knowledge to different problems, 5 middle school science teachers and 11 elementary school teachers were given a written test that required them to: (1) predict what happens to the brightness of a bulb if a change is made to the…

Two learning strategies are discussed: (1) fluent and creative idea-production involving concepts and problems, and (2) metacognition, or students' awareness of and direction of their thinking. The sample included college students, as well as teachers who used these strategies in elementary and secondary mathematics classrooms. Techniques for…

Discusses curriculum changes needed in elementary and secondary schools in response to broader social change involved in the information revolution. Highlights include the role of federal, state, and local agencies, private industry initiatives, the role of technology, and the importance of problem solving skills. Twenty-five references are…

Reports on a study that investigated the effects of various instructional practices on programming proficiency focusing on characteristics of Pascal classes. States that instructional practices involve extensive on-line access, explicit instruction, and extensive feedback. (ML)

Differentiates between learning efficiency (enhancing the rate of learning) and learning effectiveness (enhancing the mastery and retention of facts, concepts, and relationships). Discusses some of the contributions of knowledge engineering to metalearning. Provides a concept map for constructing knowledge bases, along with some possible…