The curriculum for eleven-year old students in the United Kingdom, currently adopted by most schools, includes solving linear equations with the unknown on one side only before moving onto those with the unknown on both sides in later years. School textbooks struggle with the balance between developing algebraic understanding and training…

Design is not getting the attention it deserves in industrial arts, at a time when designed products are everywhere. Design is creative problem-solving to meet a specific need. Integrating design concepts into the industrial arts curriculum is not difficult; the author explains how to do it. (AJ)

In teaching students to write extended definitions it is essential for writing instructors to teach students the concept of criteria. Without such a concept students will never be able to write effective definitions on their own. The criteria they establish for a particular definition allow them to judge which items support their positions on an…

Staff developers who have worked intensively with teachers to promote higher order thinking tend to emphasize similar types of training activities, especially involving teachers in higher order thinking and authentic problem solving in their subjects and translating ideas about the teaching of thinking into specific lessons for students.…

Arguing that the most widespread argument in favor of the teaching of programming concerns its possible impact on generalizable cognitive skills, this paper addresses the "how" of transfer. The outlines of a theory of the mechanisms of transfer are presented, the theory is used to examine the contrasts between certain studies that did…

An approach which is designed to help students better understand the utility of models in understanding and doing physics, specifically in a course in light and color, is described in this paper. Explanations are given and illustrations are provided of an analogue model of waves which assist in the creation of an abstract model to deduce Snell's…

The role of writing in the mathematics classroom is considered. Writing as a cognitive process and its relationship to problem solving is first examined. Then several long- and short-term techniques for promoting cognitive learning using writing in the mathematics classroom are considered. The Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) program is…

One challenge in today's society is to teach students how to solve problems and use the general education they acquire to arrive at realistic solutions. Techniques that cut across the curriculum and can be used by any university teacher to provide realistic experiences for students are discussed. Students need the same acquired skills in…

The University of Tulsa (Oklahoma) School for Gifted Children is a full school program for able learners ages 3-12. The school is the only one in the nation to use a curriculum based on Enaction Theory which postulates that thinking is a matter of running a simulation in one's head and involves three steps: (1) creating a mental model, (2)…

Aspects of W. Glasser's Control Theory are applied to the education of behaviorally disordered students. It is believed that stimulus/response theory and tools are inadequate with this population and that the stress should be on understanding internal motivating forces. The caring classroom, an approach which emphasizes ways to meet both the…

Numerous studies indicate that performance in solving single step multiplicative word problems is influenced by both problem structure and the types of numbers involved in the problem. For example, including numbers less than one often increases the difficulty of a problem. What remains unclear is how problem structure and number type interact in…

Two methods for solving problems are presented, designed to help people overcome difficulties that often occur in the problem-solving process. One difficulty people have is in using their knowledge to reach the decisive solution idea. The proposed "method of description" for eliminating this difficulty is based on a directed enrichment of the…

Simple experiment was conducted to lead college students to an understanding of the tenuousness and tentativeness of solutions to problems in education. After choosing a problem, students were sent to original research in scholarly journals for the collection of their data. (Author)

Based on a paper presented at the 11th National Conference on Physicians and Schools, Chicago, Illinois, October, 1967.