The authors analyzed data on the information processing abilities of incarcerated youth (n = 1480) within a correctional center. The goal was to develop a learning style profile of the juvenile offenders. Based on the current sample, they concluded that the bulk of the students were figural learners in terms of the preferred modality for receiving…

The purpose of this study was primarily to explore the effects of constructivist-oriented instruction on fifth graders' cognitive structures about biological reproduction. Furthermore, such effects on different science achievers were also investigated. The subjects of this study were 69 eleven year olds in Taiwan, who were assigned to either a…

It has been argued that some management theories and models may not be universal and are based on some cultural assumptions. It is argued in this paper that the effectiveness of applying the Learning Organization (LO) model in school contexts across different countries may be associated with cultural differences such as individualism,…

The aim of this study is to show the media, particularly television, as a device belonging to the modern governmental societies' pedagogical apparatus that teaches, among other things, a set of truths forming a cultural curriculum in which one learns to divide the world. The author argues that much of the identity modeling undertaken by neoliberal…

Scientists have used educational presentations and "bug banquets" to alter widespread negative attitudes toward invertebrates. In this article, the authors explore whether such presentations have a measurable affect on attitudes. Junior high, high school, and university students completed an attitude survey focusing on invertebrates in…

Constructivism suggests a way to restructure the learning environment to make the transfer of learning from school to work settings more effective. The theory rests on the notion that learners actively construct knowledge by integrating new information and experiences into what they have previously come to understand. Using a constructivist…

Increased interest in teacher cognition has led to new ways of explorating teachers' thoughts and beliefs. The study described here combines elements of two previous studies to make comparisons among similes and simile categories and approaches to classroom teaching. The purpose of the study was to determine the relation between support for…

This paper attempts to create a vision of what it would be like to teach for understanding, to adopt the view of learner as constructor of his or her own understanding, and to share in the creation of an environment for reconstructing students' understanding and reasoning. Such a program is based on assumptions about the cognition of learners,…

Cognitive theory and research are relevant to vocational education. Three theoretical perspectives underlie cognitive theory-based curriculum and instruction: information processing, knowledge structure, and social history. A review of these perspectives in vocational curriculum and instruction suggests that instruction supporting higher-level…

Many preservice teachers confront their own lack of confidence and actual mathematics phobia for the first time in their math procedures classes. This study was designed to explore the application of a confluent education intervention, a model based on the premise that all learning is accompanied by an affective as well as a cognitive component,…

The substantial interest exhibited in the last decade in the identification of students' misconceptions of a wide range of scientific concepts has not extended to identification of students' misconceptions of the nature of science itself. This study examined the attitudes of 32 secondary school students, each from Canada, the United States, and…

This article suggests that it is important to examine how constructivism-in-practice can flourish or flounder according to a variety of influences, noting the importance of outlining the challenges teachers face in understanding and implementing constructivism in classrooms. The article characterizes four major challenges faced by teachers in…

This paper discusses the central thesis that new research on estimation and mental computation will benefit from more focused attention on the situations in which they are used. In the first section of the paper, a brief discussion of cognitive theory, with special attention to the emerging notion of situated cognition is presented. Three sources…

Moral education is becoming one of the most important topics in school systems today. Schools are fast learning that they must do something to try to teach students good values and even more to teach students how to reason about values. Research studies suggest that athletes are less morally reasoned and less sportsmanlike than their peer groups;…

A powerful way of understanding something new is by analogy with something already known. An analogy is defined as a mapping from one structure, which is already known (the base or source), to another structure that is to be inferred or discovered (the target). The research community has given considerable attention to analogical reasoning in the…