Although the ideas of Jean Piaget still dominate the field of science education, the range and severity of criticisms has increased progressively. In recent years, the emergence of a different theory of cognitive development has begun. This paper tentatively outlines a Lakatosian Research Programme for the alternative conceptions field. The…

This paper provides 18 lesson plans that use educational technology for instruction in the visual and performing arts in secondary schools; these lesson plans were developed as part of a workshop held in the State of Washington in May 1988. The lesson plans were developed to follow the format of State of Washington Superintendent of Public…

A well-chosen example can lend life to learning in a way that few other resources available to the teacher can rival; the driving force behind the current educational reforms is learning by example. The Bush Administration, to meet the challenge of the nation's education deficit, will become pupils of the educational system to learn from the…

A study compares and contrasts a set of English and Spanish prepositions of location in the context of prototype theory. It seeks to establish the prototype concept of each preposition and the degrees of prototypicality by testing for native-speaker choices of examples that illustrate best the most basic use of the preposition. The prepositions…

To explore the relationship between inquiry and composing, a study interviewed 14 faculty members from several disciplines at the University of California at Santa Barbara, inquiring about the natural history of their research projects; where their ideas originated; what they did with those ideas; where their research took them; and what was the…

Intended as a memorial to Robert G. Sidnell, this special issue contains articles about areas of music education which he promoted. In "The Dimensions of Research in Music Education," Sidnell concluded that music education research encompasses all humanistic disciplines as well as the behavioral and social sciences. James Carlsen, in…

Theories and research on second language acquisition and grammatical theory are reviewed and discussed, especially those concerning the recent interest in understanding the nature of the language-learning faculty. The review includes work in the areas of universal grammar, interlanguage, parameterization of universal grammar, second language…

Interest in mathemagenics (adjunct aids used in text to enhance learning) has most likely resulted from the indirect effects of inserted postquestions, whereby the learning of unquestioned material is enhanced as well as that of questioned material. However, since most mathemagenics research has occurred in laboratory settings in which subjects…

The stages of interlanguage, the speech of beginning second language learners as they progress toward second language fluency, are described. Examples are drawn from the speech of Spanish speaking students of English as a second language. The continuum of interlanguage development from native language forms to target language forms includes three…

Approaches to elementary social studies education that focus on concept and inquiry learning are outlined. The basic goal of the teacher in concept teaching is to aid the student in developing relationships among factual learning, conceptualization, and personal behavior. Learning activities should focus on the process concept (i.e., one that is…

An internal cognitive variable--mental imagery representation--was studied using a set of three information-processing strategies under external stimulus visual display conditions for various learning levels. The copy strategy provided verbal and visual dual-coding and required formation of a vivid mental image. The relational strategy combined…

Two experiments compared the effectiveness of two separate mnemonic devices for learning the states and their capitals--one a complex key word system using substitute words for each syllable, the other a simple key word device interacting key words from the state and capital names in an illustration. In the first experiment, 88 fourth and fifth…

In relating brain hemisphere differences to education and educational administration, the author reviews literature on the issue and discusses the concepts involved. For background, he briefly goes over the history of brain and cognition studies and the advent of "split-brain" studies and the "triune" brain theory. Definitions…

Sixty fifth grade students participated in a study that investigated how children learn from a nonverbal film. The students were randomly assigned to one of four conditions where they were presented individually with (1) a film story, (2) a silent version of the film, (3) a descriptive audio version of the film's content, or (4) the same story…

Information-processing students solving problems in the 1960s and 1970s accepted the tradition of early experimental psychology in concentrating primarily on the study of "knowledge-lean" tasks in which competence can usually be acquired over short periods of learning and experience. In recent years, experts have examined knowledge-rich…