The writing skills item bank contain 82 objectives each represented by two writing prompts with criteria for holistic scoring. Grade levels covered are one through eight. The objectives deal with aspects of composition such as grammar, vocabulary, punctuation, logic, and creativity. The "items" are writing prompts to which the student…

The case approach to academic writing requires a student to use subjects in an active way while writing. This approach, appropriate in content courses as well as in composition classes, improves a writer's logic more quickly and effectively than concentrating on logic alone. In the case approach, a student is given a body of information about a…

A theory of the components of verbal intelligence is developed and tested in this series of experiments. After reviewing alternative theoretical frameworks for understanding verbal intelligence, a componential theory of verbal comprehension is proposed. This theory specifies the information-processing components, context cues, and mediating…

This study was designed, using a path analytic model, to assess the relative impact of different factors on science concentration decisions made by grade 10 high school students (N=237). Included in the model were selected demographic and socioeconomic factors, academic abilities factors (including logical thinking), indicators of home and school…

Political cartoons are animated through visual analogies that imply a likeness between the event portrayed in the image and the issue on which the cartoonist is making comment. Although many kinds of analogies can be used, meanings arise as the viewer is able to recognize and interpret them. This becomes difficult, though, when a cartoon's analogy…

This paper proposes a theoretical framework of moral and immoral development which considers not only reasoning, but also behavior and situational variables. Major theories of moral development proposed by Freud, Piaget, Kohlberg, Haan, and Hogan are used to illustrate the notion that, although empirical evidence shows that most individuals…

Preschoolers' ability to understand grammatical relations in passives and to generalize was studied using animate referents. Three- to five-year-old children were taught to produce passive sentence descriptions of events in which animacy of the actor and acted-on object were varied. After pretesting to determine passive sentence comprehension, the…

The goal of this project was to disseminate materials and information contained in two projects previously funded by the National Science Foundation. "Science Teaching and the Development of Reasoning" (Robert Karplus) and "The Cognitive Analysis Project" (John Renner) were the project materials disseminated in a two-phase effort. The first phase…

The purpose of this book is to report and interpret a group of research studies relating to social-cognitive development in early childhood through adolescence. Adults interpret the covert psychological properties of other people, their abilities, knowledge, motives, attitudes, perceptions, and intentions relevant to concrete situations. An infant…

An experiment using game-theory to teach a unit on "fallacies" in logic was conducted at Oakton Community College. One experimental and two control group lecture-style classes were taught by three teachers using the same text and final test. The experimental class, after an introductory segment presented in lecture style, were involved in a…

This study investigates the development of multiplicative classification skills in lower class black and middle class white children on tasks which contain either three-dimensional objects or two-dimensional pictorial representations of the same objects. Multiplicative classification refers to the simultaneous classification of objects into two or…

The role of education in social change increases as more emphasis is put on planned change. One major aspect of this emphasis is the role of education as a change agent. Using a sample of 2,500 Canadian industrial workers, this presentation examines the relationship between amount and type of education, and types of general or work-related…

Some of Professor Kenneth Pike's tagmemic theory is explained, and an attempt to apply it in freshman English classes at the University of Michigan is described. Two writing subjects (a concrete object and an abstraction) are examined from the aspects of contrast; range of variation; and distribution with respect to class, context, and matrix. The…

Methods of instruction and organization are discussed in the first chapter, including critiques of the Winnetka plan and the Dalton plan. The next author argues that algebra is a method of thinking and explains some mental processes involved. The following three chapters are concerned with the functional concept. Using function as a unifying…

This paper has attempted to outline some basic aspects of Piaget's theory and place them in cross-cultural perspective. Several questions concerning approaches and the relevance of cross-cultural research for classification of Piagetian theory were discussed: (1) What types of questions within Piagetian theory are amenable to cross-cultural…