Imagery has a significant role in cognitive development. Reading research has established the fact that good readers image spontaneously and that there is a high interrelationship between overall preference for a story, the amount of text-related imagery in the story, comprehension, and recall. Imagery researchers agree that everyone is capable of…

Two longitudinal studies of expert-level cognitive skills and their acquisition are reported. The first study focused on the skill of an otherwise normal subject who increased his digit-span to over 100 digits with 4.5 years of practice using the mnemonic system developed by W. G. Chase and K. A. Ericsson. The second study followed two college…

Intended to help teachers define critical thinking/reading and to unfold opportunities and strategies for critical reading, this monograph discusses some of the practical issues that teachers face and summarizes some of the philosophical and psychological questions related to the teaching of critical thinking. Sections of the monograph include:…

Arguing that a powerful teaching technique teachers can use for developing students' comprehension strategies is direct instruction in the thinking strategies used for various comprehension tasks, this paper: presents characteristics of 25 tradebooks appropriate for the application of various comprehension strategies; gives specific examples of…

When is a gifted child ready for the discovery of a new idea? When is this child ready for independent searching and inquiry? Sometimes in many traditional educational settings, it seems as if a student must wait until graduate school before he is allowed to carry out independent inquiry. At the turn of this century, there is more to learn and…

Over the course of half of the last century, psychologists have had a particular focus on creativity abilities training. Developing educational programs that help to enhance students' creativity is among the most important goals of our educational system. The present study was undertaken to explore: (1) the university student's creativity ability;…

On the basis of psychologically and philosophically oriented scientific resources, this article analyses philosophical aspects of personality development in the context of an educology of vocation. A classification of philosophical trends of personality development in educology is presented, as they are involved in vocational education and…

This paper discusses the use of proportional reasoning and the mathematics of space to help bridge the gap from secondary school to university while stimulating the interest and mathematical appetite of a diverse student population. The five goals of NASA's Mission Mathematics program are adopted. An interactive lesson used with freshmen…

This study explored the effect of skill-based curricula (based on Bloom's Taxonomy) on the academic performance of incarcerated youth. It investigated the impact of teaching thinking skills as a model for designing curricula at the West Virginia Industrial Home for Youth's Johnston High School, a maximum-security juvenile facility. The Graduate…

Slowly, some universities are beginning to shift towards a new paradigm, the "learning paradigm," that proposes that institutions of higher learning exist not to provide instruction but instead to produce learning. The learning paradigm focuses on teaching critical thinking skills as life skills. If a university follows the learning…

This paper reports results related to the development of a consistent descriptive language for research on mathematical reasoning. Ways of reasoning deductively are highlighted, using examples drawn from observations of young students. One-step deductions versus multi-step deductions, known versus hypothetical premises, and single versus multiple…

This book begins with the introductory chapter, "Don't Think; Just Get on with Your Work," in which the author argues that children are thinkers, but that there are schooling barriers to engaging this thinking. Chapter 1, A Place to Think, considers these barriers in more detail and provides some ideas about how children learn in schools and what…

The project's focus was to learn more about the ways to best assess and support the development of numeracy in the early grades. Project goals include involving teachers and researchers in: (1) the creation and use of performance-based tasks most appropriate for assessing numeracy in young learners; (2) the development and refinement of…

In this paper, we investigate the predominance of the linear model in 12-13 year old Cypriot students, while solving non-proportional word problems involving area and volume of rectangular figures. Using three different kinds of tests related to the context of the word problems presented we attempt to identify a differentiation in students…

In theory, effective thinking is a trait that is valued by schools at all levels; however, it is a skill that is very rarely taught. Teaching thinking skills explicitly and embedding them into a literacy curriculum can help students become more effective critical and creative thinkers. This article defines thinking skills, describes how they…