Outlines the steps a college composition instructor can take to help students connect the idea relationships in a reading selection or in a writing assignment. The steps are based on a conceptual strategy known as semantic mapping or semantic networking. (SRT)

Reading management programs have become very popular in elementary schools. Students select a title from a prescribed reading list, then are tested for recall of facts and events in the story. Students are motivated to read as many titles as possible since they must achieve a certain score to win prizes. Although there have been reports that this…

Philosophical analysis indicates that underlying much of the Western scientific world view is the metaphysical presupposition of duality, the claim being made that the world is made sense of in terms of either/or and in terms of polarities (e.g., light versus dark). By way of contrast, no concept is more important in Asian philosophical and…

A study examined the relationships between cognitive differentiation and three methods of influence. A brief summary of cognitive differentiation examined the historical formulation, the organizational applications, and the measures and methods involved. Similarly, a review of organizational influence summarized the importance of influence as well…

Focuses on the use of cognitive mapping within sociology. Describes an assignment where students created a cognitive map that focused on names of theorists and concepts related to them. Discusses sociological imagination in relation to cognitive mapping and the assessment of the assignment. (CMK)

Discusses the design of graphical user interfaces. Highlights include conceptual models, including user needs, content, and what multimedia can do; and tools for building the users' mental models, including metaphor, natural mappings, prompts, feedback, and user testing. (LRW)

Illustrates the multiple strategies used by second graders to solve a problem with three addends and how their teacher tries to map their thinking into the system of mathematical notation. Describes the American Federation of Teachers' Thinking Mathematics program that the teacher uses. (MKR)

To help students overcome difficulties in understanding scientific texts in English, the effect of using two reading study strategies (knowledge-map and underlining) on reading comprehension was studied. Both strategies improved performance on open-ended questioning and summarization. (Contains 32 references.) (Author/LB)

Structure of mathematical concept of multiplication and its integration into conceptual system, with respect to formal and informal aspects of understanding for 10 university students, are investigated through linear scale assessment of examples for prototypical effects and through follow-up interview which included direct explanations of…

Describes the second-year French program at the University of California, Berkeley, which attempts to bridge the gap between intermediate language courses and upper-division writing courses by incorporating such strategies as semantic mapping to promote higher-level thinking, help students to organize their writing, and foster the development of…

Presents the ALEXIA system, a lexical-learning environment for French as a second or foreign language, and describes its network module, which can automatically build graphs of certain lexical semantic relations. (Author/VWL)

Describes the use of cognitive mapping to identify historical conceptions by examining whether adolescents' historical knowledge can be characterized according to distinctions between critical and traditional orientations. Presents three "ideal conceptions'" of Jewish history: (1) theological; (2) sociological; and (3)…

Describes a framework for computer-aided concept mapping that provides the means to easily trace the learning process. Presents the construction of a concept map as a script which consists of elementary operations. This approach can be applied in presentation tools, in evaluating the learning process, and in computer-aided learning. (Author/AEF)

Examines the information seeking and evaluative behavior of attorneys and explores the dynamic mental models attorneys construct. Highlights include domain-specific relevance; cognitive maps; current research on the retrieval performance of two full-text legal databases, LEXIS and WESTLAW; and implications of attorneys' mental models for legal…

This paper considers efforts made in evaluating a distance-learning course, which was intended to prepare students for working on an undergraduate dissertation in business and economic areas. Course delivery had stressed a tutorial approach with an emphasis on individual mentor-student exchanges. Given the nature of the learning approach and the…