Addresses the question of the range of applicability of Bertrand Russell's conception of critical thinking. Argues that important instances of critical thinking require other resources in addition: decisions about the conduct of one's life, philosophical method, scientific methods, and creative thought. Identifies limitations of Russellian…

North Carolina's A+ program views teachers as professionals capable of improving curriculum and practice with intensive professional development. This in turn raises teacher morale and improves practice. The paper explains how A+ supports professionalism, describes its professional development model, and presents details on its intensive…

Eye fixation patterns were used to identify reading strategies of adults as they read multiple-topic expository texts. A clustering technique distinguished four strategies that differed with respect to the ways in which readers processed text. Findings indicated that qualitatively distinct reading strategies are observable among competent, adult…

To understand the development of number-word construction, students in grades 1, 3, 5, and 7 named and counted from a set of numbers into the billions in two studies. Findings are discussed both in relation to children's growing knowledge of the number system and to vocabulary development. (Author)

Seventy six readers were assessed on levels of verbal efficiency and were recorded thinking aloud while reading text. Protocols were analyzed for evidence of compensation deployment. Analyses revealed that those with less automated reading skills deployed them more often. As expected, verbal efficiency was uncorrelated with literal comprehension…

Three habituation experiments examined the necessary conditions under which infants invoked the principle of rational action, interpreting behavior as goal-directed action. Found that the rational action principle operated at 9 months but not at 6 months. Perceptual cues indicating agency were not necessary prerequisites for a goal-directed…

Considers how many students come to hold mistaken beliefs about the learning process, thus depriving themselves of the opportunity to reason out their difficulties and discover their capabilities. Explores how students, through developing metacognitive skills, can examine misconceptions about learning and begin to acquire new habits of thoughts…

Suggests the case of the British Westland Lysander P12 Ground Strafer aircraft illustrates the problem of narrow thinking. Claims that had the initial designers approached the problem in a broad way, they would have seen in advance that the project would fail. Concludes the case is instructive as an industrial problem, but it also demonstrates the…

Describes a study on secondary school students' ways of thinking about linear, quadratic, rational, and square-root inequalities. Indicates that using graphic representations of parabolas when solving rational and quadratic inequalities usually yielded correct solutions and difficulties arose when students failed to reject the excluded values or…

Constructed a multiple choice instrument to assess the level of competence of students aged 15 and 16 on eight cross-curricular skills. A pilot study involving 465 students and a main study with 9,000 students supported the developed measure, the Cross-Curriculum Skills Test, as a valid and reliable test of cross-curricular skills. (SLD)

Examines the outcomes of a unit that integrates explicit teaching of general reasoning patterns into the teaching of a specific science content. Focuses on the teaching of argumentation skills in the context of dilemmas in human genetics. (Contains 50 references.) (Author/YDS)

Encourages Level 1 students (those taking a subject for the first time at the higher education level) to develop a deeper learning approach. Uses a cooperative learning approach to pose conceptual questions for interactive discussions and changes both teaching method and form of examination paper for a Mechanics module. (Contains 17 references.)…

Examines the cognition of five pairs of high school students over time as they built quantitative ecological models using STELLA software. Applies theories of the multifaceted nature of cognition to describe object-level, metalevel, and emotional dimensions of cognitive performance that help explain the observed differences among students'…

Previous research (e.g., De Bock, 2002) has shown that--due to the extensive attention paid to proportional reasoning in elementary and secondary mathematics education--many students tend to overrely on proportional methods in diverse domains of mathematics (e.g., geometry, probability). We investigated the development of misapplication of…

This article sets the stage for the following 3 articles. It opens with a brief history of attempts to characterize advanced mathematical thinking, beginning with the deliberations of the Advanced Mathematical Thinking Working Group of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education. It then locates the articles within 4…