A SERIES OF PAPERS DEALING WITH THE TEACHING OF THINKING TO ADOLESCENTS IS CONTAINED IN THIS REPORT FROM THE JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL ASSOCIATION OF ILLINOIS. TOPICS INCLUDE--(1) A REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE ON THINKING AND TEACHING, (2) THE DEVELOPMENT OF INDEPENDENT THINKING, (3) FACTORS RELATED TO THINKING READINESS, (4) TEACHING PUPILS HOW TO THINK,…

This paper analyzes an instructional approach based on a student-designed and constructed model of a city and describes how this approach was used in a college-level sociology class on ethnic relations in the city. The approach is called 'City Building.' The major objective of this approach is to bring social life into the classroom. Students…

This paper explains how a sociology teacher used a Guided Design approach to teach students in an introductory college level sociology course about the process and content of sociology and about problem solving. In a Guided Design approach, topics are presented as problems which students can solve by using prepared reading materials and by…

The model described here was developed for use as a program planning guide by teachers, many of them business and other lay people, at the secondary school level who offer adult education courses on how to make management decisions and solve problems. Ten features of the model are listed: (1) The purpose is to assist owner-operators or managers to…

Provided is the manual for the "Think Aloud" program for young aggressive boys which is designed to slow down and inhibit first associations; increase verbal mediation; inhibit immature, irrelevant speech; increase repertory of alternative responses; increase skill in staying with a plan and evaluating outcomes; and facilitate transfer…

An experiment was conducted to investigate the relationship between similarity of troubleshooting strategies and similarity of sets of utilities (i.e., numeric values representing beneficial troubleshooting outcomes) to assess the justification for using discrepancies between student and expert utilities as a basis for altering the Adaptive…

The TIPS (Teaching Information Processing System) Course Package was designed to be used with the Macro-Games Course Package (SO 011 930) in order to train college students to apply the tools of economic analysis to current problems. TIPS is used to provide feedback and individualized assignments to students, as well as information about the…

Research has indicated that one significant deficiency in the intellectual capabilities of disadvantaged children is a disability in abstract thinking. Although all very young children lack this ability, the environment of the middle class child provides an opportunity so that as this child matures, the ability to think in abstract terms naturally…

This inquiry demonstrated how the educational assumptions underlying the Montessori Method can be applied to constructing educational objectives and evaluating programs for culturally disadvantaged children. Initially, it was shown how these assumptions concentrate upon significant areas of human development. Then, information about…

Progress is reported on four research tasks. An experiment tested the effectiveness of a computer-based phonology instructional system for second-language learning. In research on models of human-computer interactions, experiments were performed demonstrating that the provision of certain incentives to the users of a time-sharing system can have…

One of the major goals of the social studies is to help students gain and refine skills in the area of value clarification. Value sheets, carefully planned activities designed to elicit value clarifying patterns of language from students, are one way of securing value clarification. Sheets, planned in conjunction with ongoing units of instruction,…

A review is presented of the role of algorithms in learning and instruction. The paper first describes an algorithm as a procedure guaranteed to produce a correct result and lists its features as: 1) having a reasonably finite number of unambiguously defined operations; 2) having zero or more inputs from a specified domain; 3) having outputs with…

The need for planning in educational systems may be interpreted as the need to identify, prepare, and devise new or revised procedures through which explicit systemic goals may be realized. Usually such efforts have a specific time orientation. Planning is further related to policy in the sense that policy is a legitimized procedure or course of…

The two objectives of this study were to compare the results of the teaching of written composition to high school students, using a problem-solving approach, with the results obtained using a traditional approach, and to determine if a problem-solving approach produces a significant difference in reflective thinking skills. Three null hypotheses…

Abstracts of 36 research reports are provided. The reports were prepared by investigators for presentation at the 55th annual meeting of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. A broad range of topics related to mathematics education is covered. Nine reports deal with problem solving, eight are concerned with instructional methods, five…