This article presents a scenario in which the dean of the faculty of a fictional college discusses the issue of critical thinking (CT) with other school officials, using their insights into its nature and roots to prepare a course of action to present to the board of trustees. She learns that college graduates need to have strong CT…

This article examines the problem of learning to learn from the perspective of research on the organization and quality of students' knowledge. This approach is based on the assumption that students' learning competencies can be studied through the analysis of the outcomes of schooling. The article synthesizes findings of a long-term research…

Background: Evidence of maintained gains from thinking skills interventions are rare in the literature even within sectors of education, let alone across sectors. Aims: This study investigated the cognitive effects of collaborative philosophical inquiry at long-term 2-year follow-up, after the participants had transferred to secondary (high)…

This paper reports the development of critical thinking of urban high school students in the Chinese city of Xi'an. It presents the assessment of the students' two components of critical thinking: dispositions towards critical thinking and critical thinking skills, using the California Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory and the California…

This study investigated the effect of two problem-solving techniques: (a) free-association with a direct reference to the problem, called shortly direct, and (b) free-association with a remote and postponed reference to the problem, called remote, on fluency and originality of ideas in solving ill-structured problems. The research design…

Education for gifted children is currently one of the hottest educational issues in Korea. Much money and effort are being invested in this area of education. Recent announcements by the Korean Ministry of Education state that all children should be educated to the level of which they are capable, and the current program for gifted students should…

In this article, the author reviews the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children--Four Edition Spanish (WISC-IV Spanish), an individually administered measure of intelligence for Spanish-speaking children who are English language learners and relatively new to American culture. The WISC-IV Spanish, like its English counterpart, the WISC-IV, is…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the level of cognitive behavior exhibited by secondary agriculture teachers and compare the behavior to science teachers. Teachers within the two groups were found to have similar attitudes toward teaching at higher levels of cognition. Agriculture teachers spent 83% of their time on lower-order…

There is evidence that spontaneous learning leads to relational understanding and high positive affect. To study spontaneous abstracting, a model was constructed by combining the RBC model of abstraction with Krutetskii's mental activities. Using video-stimulated interviews, the model was then used to analyze the behavior of two Year 8 students…

Two experiments were conducted to examine the on-line processing mechanisms used by young children to comprehend pronouns. The work focuses on their use of two highly relevant sources of information: (1) the gender and number features carried by English pronouns, and (2) the differing accessibility of discourse entities, as influenced by…

The present study was conducted to describe the developmental skills of a national sample of infants and toddlers at entry into early intervention services. Caregivers were asked about their child's skills during a telephone interview. Summary values were derived from descriptions of motor, communication, independence, and cognitive skills. More…

Drawing upon research, theory, classroom and personal experiences, this paper focuses on the development of primary-aged children's computational fluency. It emphasises the critical links between number sense and a child's ability to perform mental and written computation. The case of multi-digit multiplication is used to illustrate these…

This article looks at how children in preschool through second grade intuitively solve mathematical problems rather than using textbook strategies with a single path to a solution. The authors discuss Cognitively Guided Instruction (CGI), a curriculum approach that helps teachers understand and encourage children's use of intuitive strategies.…

In 1999, things were dismal at Lebanon, Pennsylvania's Harding Elementary School. Many kids in this former coal town started at a disadvantage and never seemed to catch up. They were bored with books about "frogs on logs," says then-new principal Cheryl Champion. Since they were not engaged, they acted out. Harding's classroom…

This study investigates how mathematics secondary schools' teachers in Jordan perceive critical thinking and compares teachers' perceptions before and after educational reform. Data were collected from 12 schools twice: in 1988 and in 2004 by interviewing 47 Mathematics teachers. The interview included questions related to teachers' understanding…