Students (n = 328) from US and UK universities completed four self-report measures related to intellectual competence: typical intellectual engagement (TIE), openness to experience, self-assessed intelligence (SAI), and learning approaches. Confirmatory data reduction was used to examine the structure of TIE and supported five major factors:…

Three distinct theories can be set forth for viewing intelligence: a "super-intellect theory" associated with the belief in innate ideas; a sensualistic theory that posits no intellectual role beyond synthesizing of sense-data; and a concept of intelligence as a power to abstract, judge, and reason. Many chronic and current educational…

Psychologist Howard Gardner argues that schools fail because they do not confront often flawed childhood theories about the world that students bring to the classroom. He claims teachers must acknowledge, challenge, and build on such assumptions so students can internalize lessons taught in school and apply them outside the classroom. (SM)

The "componential" theory of intelligence explains intelligence in terms of three types of component processes that make up intelligent performance. The first of these, "metacomponents," are the higher-order or executive processes that one uses to plan what one is going to do, monitor what one is doing, and evaluate what one…

A study was undertaken to determine if there was a difference in verbal responses in classrooms of teachers who scored high and who scored low on the complexity scale of the Omnibus Personality Inventory (OPI), which measures teacher tolerance of ambiguity and preference for complexity. Forty college English teachers were tested and ranked…

A review of Piaget's theory and research on children's cognitive development is presented, including a discussion of the psychological structures of intelligence, developmental constructivism, and the evolution of knowledge as a subject-object relation. Piaget's assessment techniques are summarized, including moral development, number…