The experience-oriented approach to early childhood learning assumes that the way children see, understand, and conceptualize is more basic than skills and knowledge, and that preschools should systematically work on developing children's awareness of different phenomena in the world around them. Content areas in this approach foster children's:…

Critical thinking has been identified as essential to development of the professional nursing role. A process, "cognitive reengineering," has been created to facilitate critical thinking skill development in RNs. The process is derived from adult learning principles, techniques of consciousness-raising, and transformational theory. Its basic…

Students begin their college studies with a set of epistemological beliefs about what they think knowledge is and how they think it is learned; for most students, the experience of college alters these beliefs in fundamental, transformative ways. This study explores the relation between epistemological beliefs, motivation, and cognition in two…

This paper advocates for the improvement of presentational methods of teaching and expository learning, based on David Ausubel's theory of Meaningful Verbal Learning and its derivative, the Advance Organizer Model of Teaching. This approach to teaching enables teachers to convey large amounts of information as meaningfully and efficiently as…

The time has come to seriously consider thinking as a major goal for teaching and learning at all levels of education. This calls for educational restructuring in which higher order cognitive processes are defined, and a better understanding for how to develop them in all youngsters and adults is built. Youngsters need to become constructors of…

The applicability of a standardized performance measurement procedure is critically investigated, in order to assess reading growth for students with severe reading difficulties in a longitudinal design. To establish an appropriate growth model, several approaches are reviewed. Among them, a simplex model is chosen and tested with various…

This handbook is designed for college teachers who want to explore new ways to enhance student learning. The handbook draws on the knowledge of teachers and scientists with extensive experience in the natural sciences and a keen interest in effective science teaching, and is appropriate for anyone teaching undergraduate science. This handbook…

This report relates the story of the schools, teachers, and students involved in implementing the framework known as the Environment as an Integrating Context (EIC). The results of a nationwide study, a description of the major concepts and assumptions underlying EIC, an exploration of the range of successful EIC programs across the United States,…

The purpose of this study was to test the feasibility of using a model adapted from the instructional design and technology (ID&T) taxonomy model proposed by the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) Definitions and Terminology Committee to build an ID&T knowledge base. The model was tested by mapping a random…

If the principles of feminism are to be enacted and nurtured in their development, then there must be an understanding of: (1) psychological, social, economic, legal, and cultural obstacles confronting women; and (2) assumption and expectations surrounding the feminist perspective. The classroom offers a unique context for developing these…

This book presents a theory of how adults learn by making meaning of their experiences. Chapter 1 gives an overview of an emerging transformation theory of adult learning, compares it with other theories of adult learning, and describes the dynamics of the process through which one makes meaning of one's experience. Chapter 2 examines the way…

Data from recent international conferences and existing studies show that adult literacy research questions pursued by academicians and those pursued by practitioners are markedly different. Research concerns expressed by these two groups, in both developed and developing countries, are based on different assumptions regarding the nature,…

The Self-Knowledge Inventory of Lifelong Learning Strategies (SKILLS) was developed to measure adult learning strategies in real-life learning situations. SKILLS consists of a series of 12 scenarios from real-world situations that reflect Shirk's (1990) nine general categories of learning for real-life situations and that necessitate various types…

The pilot project described in this report involved the development of an integrated art and music curriculum model for elementary grades. In this discussion, an example of one integrated unit is described for each of grades one through six. The curriculum units are centered around literary or musical themes that incorporate a variety of…

This article discusses a primary level mathematics research program, Cognitively Guided Instruction (CGI), which investigates the impact of providing primary teachers with access to a structured, coherent body of knowledge about children's thinking in mathematics on teachers' knowledge and beliefs, their instruction, and their students' learning.…