This report covers Phase II of a two-phase project concerned with the development of new measures of cognitive variables in elementary school children. The four tasks undertaken in Phase II were: (1) prepare, revise and describe instruments designed to measure the cognitive variables categorized as concept formation, language development, logical…

The Institute was 1) to provide a group of 13 experienced teachers with techniques for teaching elementary school students to recognize and define problems, and 2) to work closely with these teachers, evaluating the effectiveness of their teaching techniques over a period of 1 year. A series of workshops used reading, films, discussion, and…

This book is a collection of papers presented at the symposium, "Conference on Ordinal Scales of Cognitive Development, sponsored by the California Test Bureau. Papers include: "The Theory of Stages in Cognitive Development" (J. Piaget); "Two Approaches to Intelligence: Piagetian and Psychometric" (D. Elkind); "An…

This study was designed to investigate the role of culture and education in the development of formal operational thought, by comparing the results achieved by suburban American youths, American educated youths who were recent migrants, and youths who had been educated in Puerto Rico. It was hypothesized that the suburban youths and Puerto Rican…

Certain aspects of the performance of adults on verbal reasoning tasks were studied. The four main objectives of the study were: to develop a self-instructional booklet for use in teaching adults the functional rules of classification; to construct a reliable instrument for use in assessing the capability of adults to perform verbal classification…

This report is the initial overall summary of a comprehensive analysis of children's logical concept attainments and memoric abilities and deals exclusively with the initial and second year's assessment data. The focal point for this normative investigation is the concrete operations period spanning the years of middle childhood. The measurement…

Twenty-three computer assisted instructional packages for primary and intermediate/middle levels are listed with sources. Courseware was selected on the basis of high interest and probability of initial success with learning logic, science, social studies, and business areas represented. (DB)

Describes an approach to problem solving based on real-world problems. Discusses problem analysis and definitions, preparation of briefing documents, solution finding techniques (brainstorming and synectics), solution evaluation and judgment, and implementation. (JM)

A single-class method to help students clarify their thinking so they can identify quality work is presented. Unless students are familar with the criteria being applied to their work, their assignment work is unlikely to show improvement. (MLW)

Examines developmental differences among children and adults in causal reasoning concerning story characters who were offered various inducements to behave helpfully. Results indicate that external consequences enhanced attributions of internal motivation for kindergartners and reduced such attributions for older subjects. (Author/DB)

Discussed is whether, and to what extent, science teachers critically and spontaneously attend to the logical structure of situations, and whether they need prompting, or completely fail to do so. The relationship between the results of this study and science teachers' pre- and in-service education is discussed. (Author/KR)

Use of debate in graduate study in education, especially with intrinsically interesting topics, can be valuable for developing critical thinking skills needed by teachers, counselors, and administrators. Debates address a range of communication skills and provide opportunities for teamwork and assessment of individual strengths and weaknesses.…

Demonstrates how to promote the transference of concepts and principles developed in other curricula to enhance a student's subject matter mastery in soil classification. Describes course format, critical thinking techniques, and a course evaluation. A conclusion and references are included. (Author/RT)

Provides background material on logic programing and presents PROLOG as a high-level artificial intelligence programing language that borrows its basic constructs from logic. Suggests the language is one which will help the educator to achieve various goals, particularly the promotion of problem solving ability. (MVL)

Discusses the structure and results of a university physics entry examination that measures students' expertise with mathematical tools and formal logic operations required for the study of college physics. Indicates that the examination adequately serves incoming students: to evaluate academic potential; to emphasize specific deficiencies; and to…