The Winthrop College Critical Issues Symposium for freshmen is discussed, with attention to the format of the seminar, the theoretical bases, seminar goals, strategies employed, administrative and political factors, faculty development opportunities, and assessment. The symposium is designed to help freshmen become active learners, questioners,…

The application of behavioral and cognitive learning theories to the design of computer-assisted instruction (CAI) at the college level is discussed. A model of instructional design and the unique qualities of computers are also briefly reviewed. The general model of instruction, which is used for designing a curriculum, has five major components:…

According to the ACT theory of skill acquisition, cognitive skills are encoded by a set of productions, which are organized according to a hierarchical goal structure. People solve problems in new domains by applying weak problem-solving procedures to declarative knowledge they have about this domain. From these initial problem solutions,…

A two-year ethnographic study of kindergarteners' experiences in a French immersion classroom focused on the processes by which children find and construct meaning through classroom interaction and communication processes. Data were gathered through classroom observation and videotapes. The initially unilingual English-speaking students were…

The purpose of this document is to develop a usable science teaching guide based on the process skills methodology for the middle school life science teacher. It is intended to provide an efficient and effective tool for the interested teacher to use to develop the skills of the methodology. It could also be used as companion to the latest set of…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 10 titles deal with the following topics: (1) how speech acts in advertisements relate to the purpose of selling merchandise; (2) the use and evaluation of accounts in problematic episodes; (3) rhetoric as a way of knowing; (4)…

There has been a marked increase in recent years in research studies of the alternative "frameworks of thought" that learners bring to the interpretation of what they meet in school science. Provided are summaries of papers and discussions from a meeting which critically reviewed the methods being used in such research and their…

Spaning 30 years, the essays in this collection present variations on the theme of how, through language and social interaction, humans evolve increasingly more accurate maps of their worlds. The six essays in the first section, "Literature and the Shaping of Experience," point to a central concern for literature as a fundamental way of knowing…

A college English teacher, dissatisfied with the approach used in her composition classes and with its results, turned to the Outward Bound concepts of the German physician and schoolmaster, Kurt Hahn. These concepts include a belief in the value of creating adversity in order to overcome it, a belief that important things happen to people who are…

The community-based approach to global education has the greatest potential for involving students in experiential learning that will involve the total nature of the child--cognitive, affective, and psychomotor. This approach also has the greatest potential to help students achieve the educational objectives based on the Tyler-Taba rationale of…

A common thread in contemporary research in student learning refers to the ways in which students go about learning. A theory of learning is presented that accentuates the interaction between the person and the situation. Research evidence implies a form of meta-cognition called meta-learning, the awareness of students of their own learning…

While there has been much debate about defining and teaching critical thinking, little discussion has occurred regarding the connection between critical thinking and creative thinking, especially in relationship to teaching speech communication. While it was once thought that creativity is something that some are born with and some are not, recent…

Research on children's oral reading errors provides evidence that both top down and bottom up processes interactively contribute to reading. Syntactic and semantic expectations are sources of information for top down processing, while knowledge of letter-sound relations provides information for bottom up processing. As children learn to read,…

A study sought to determine to what degree educators are cognizant of principles of learning as applied to the students they teach. Examined were the relationships among: (1) the criterion variable of educators' perception of the degree that their students learn according to selected learning principles and (2) the predictor variables of work…

The International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education (IGPME) was founded in 1976 at the Third International Congress for Mathematics Education, to promote international contacts and the exchange of scientific information in the psychology of mathematical education. The goal was to further a deeper and more correct understanding of…