This paper discusses some of the issues involved in utilizing Piagetian theory in educational planning. Piaget has emphasized the need for active learning, peer interaction, consideration of individual needs and abilities, and the development of logical thought, elements which are not emphasized in the traditional classroom. Piaget maintains that…

College students need a learning environment that encourages them to develop their reasoning abilities, as well as to master course content. This booklet discusses an attempt to create such an environment: the ADAPT program at the University of Nebraska. ADAPT, Accent on Developing Abstract Processes of Thought, is a comprehensive,…

This paper presents a study of the relationship between compensation and conservation in 80 children, ages 5-6. Findings are compared to those of an earlier experiment which was designed to determine whether or not prior knowledge of the compensation rule increases kindergarten children's susceptibility to conservation training experiences. It is…

As an integral step in a comprehensive, four year longitudinal analysis of concept development, a series of logical concept tasks based upon Piagetian theory, and suitable for administration to individuals five years of age or older, are described. The developmental focus was the logical groupements associated with the concrete operations period…

This study investigated the possibility of training or improving intrasentence organizational skills (i.e., those that enable the reader to encode and process verbal information in higher-order units) and explored the effects that training had on reading comprehension. The subjects were 31 third graders, 16 experimental students and 15 control…

In this paper it is shown that one's conception of intelligence and its development profoundly affects the formulation of educational objectives. A mechanistic conception of intelligence leads to the definition of objectives as a collection of fragmented "cognitive skills" that have little to do with children's development of intelligence. A…

In an effort to cross-validate a Japanese study, a 16 item test of logical connectives was administered to 223 boys and girls at each grade level (third through ninth grades) and two groups of college sophomore girls. The purpose of the test was to assess their understanding of class inclusion and exclusion, class intersection, and class union.…

The consistently inferior performance of economically disadvantaged children led to this study designed to investigate how cognitive development changes with age and how it is affected by previous life experience. Classification behavior and inferential thinking were the main concerns of the study. The measurement instrument was the Matrix Test, a…

In studies of young children in ghetto schools, those who most often ranked low in cooperative behavior were those with the most verbal and personal spontaneity. Unfortunately, these children with considerable self-confidence, eagerness, and curiosity become either disruptive and difficult or quiet, unresponsive, and nonlearning. The major…

There are a number of recurring topics in the articles that comprise this yearbook, such as the nature of both informal and demonstrative geometry, the reasons for teaching both, and the extent of such courses. Other emphasized topics are use of the analytic method, whether to combine plane and solid geometry, the place of algebra and trigonometry…

The necessity of evaluating research methodology is discussed, and a profiling approach is proposed. Explanatory statements about the research process, directions for doing the actual profiling of the research report, a research profiling flow chart, a research profile sheet, and two additional graphic aids to understanding are included. The…

Data were obtained on the reasoning processes of 92 normal seventh graders (IQ range, 90-130), 14 adjusted seventh graders (IQ range, 70-90), and 54 educable mentally retarded (EMR) junior high students (IQ range, 55-80) to determine whether spatial imagery differentially influenced the solution of three-term series problems, to determine the…

FACTOR ANALYSIS WAS CONDUCTED ON SEVERAL COGNITIVE ABILITIES IN AN EFFORT TO RELATE THESE ABILITIES TO TASKS OF CONCEPT ATTAINMENT AND INFORMATION PROCESSING. THE ABILITIES UNDER CONSIDERATION WERE DESCRIBED AS GENERAL REASONING, VERBAL COMPREHENSION, INDUCTION, DEDUCTION, SPATIAL SCANNING, PERCEPTUAL SPEED, ROTE MEMORY, AND SPAN MEMORY. ABILITY…

A PRESENTATION WAS MADE OF THE ANALYSIS OF BEHAVIOR THAT IS REQUIRED AS A FIRST STEP IN THE PROCESS OF DEVELOPING PROCEDURES AND MATERIALS FOR "DISCOVERY LEARNING." TEACHING BY THE DISCOVERY METHOD IS DESCRIBED AS REQUIRING THAT A MINIMUM OF STRUCTURED INSTRUCTIONAL SEQUENCE BE IMPOSED TO ALLOW THE CHILD TO (1) LEARN BY DISCOVERY AND (2)…

Kindergarten and third grade children originally assessed in 1973 were retested one year later on a series of conservation and transitive inference tasks (length and weight content areas). An additional sample of matched cohort/grade subjects was assessed in the second year only to permit evaluation of repeat measurement biases for the…