Considers the value of preschool children saying the Pledge of Allegiance daily in their classrooms. Suggests that there may be better ways to help children grasp abstract concepts like patriotism and to provide developmentally appropriate ways to explore the symbol of the flag. (LB)

An ethnographic study of adult literacy classes in Egypt depicted rote recitation, copying, and dictation as forms of ritual that maintain social order. A sequence of framing, modeling, practicing, performing, and evaluating was followed. Focus was on correct performance rather than interpretation, comprehension, or critical evaluation. (SK)

In school settings, students are typically evaluated using group achievement tests, IQ scales, and college entrance exams that focus more on rote-verbal skills (e.g., vocabulary, mathematical facts) than on higher level executive functions (e.g., abstract thinking, problem solving). However, recent neuropsychological findings suggest that…

The authors have been engaged in research focused on students' depth of learning as well as teachers' efforts to foster deep learning. Findings from a study examining the teaching practices and student learning outcomes of sixty-four teachers in seventeen different states (Smith et al. 2005) indicated that most of the learning in these classrooms…

Through the narratives of North American slaves a vivid picture of their lives, struggles, hopes, and aspirations emerges. The slave narrative arose as a response to, and a refutation of, claims that blacks could not write. Slave writings were often direct extensions of speech. Through a process of imitation and repetition, the black slave's…

This report suggests that research in education, as well as the design of instruction, can be importantly influenced by the paradigm that guides the work. The application of a paradigm to educational research is illustrated, and two paradigms (reception learning and discovery learning) are contrasted. Finally, it is suggested that all educational…

Brown and Barclay (1976) trained educable retarded children to use either of two memory search strategies, Anticipation or Rehearsal, involving a self-checking component. Following the training, both their free recall performance and their ability to estimate their readiness for a recall test improved significantly. In the present research, the…

Beginning with a preconceived bias that "real" (i.e. nonartifactual) age differences in transfer and retroaction do exist, the author feels that the available literature permits no clear conclusions relating the process of aging and transfer mechanisms, or aging and retroaction. Research to date is viewed as assuming that "interference" manifests…

A series of exploratory studies and three experiments dealing with conceptual rule learning are reported in this paper. Discussants related the results to subject matter fields and to educational research and development. Four groups of subjects, five to twelve years old, solved six rule learning problems. It was concluded that younger children…

The role of imagery formation as a mnemonic device in drawing valid inferences from a prose passage was studied. The 72 undergraduate subjects were divided into two groups: one given instructions to form images for the objects discussed in the text, the other given instructions to repeat each sentence five times. Half the passages consisted of…

This article presents an eclectic approach to spelling instruction, combining ideas from two basic methods: phonetic and memorization. Teaching procedures, student activities, and materials are suggested. A chart of the most basic reading/spelling generalizations is included. (SJL)

Ten principles to apply in teaching children to memorize basic facts are discussed. (MN)

An attempt to replace a tradition of theoretical rote memorization by objective-oriented learning is described, based on an experiment involving teaching anatomy to dental students at the Royal Dental College in Copenhagen. Both students and teachers favored this independent learning system. (Author/LBH)

Changing social context and changing curriculum have brought the parochial and the public schools closer together. (MM)

To produce maximum learning achievement, parents and teachers can take five basic steps: (1) finding a simple approach to mastery learning; (2) improving learning conditions at the beginning of sequential courses; (3) improving the home study environment; (4) helping students develop "automatic" reading skills; and (5) stressing higher mental…