Research, evaluation, and policy analysis are elements of inquiry whose functions, aims, purposes, intended audiences, and intended outcomes have been confused in the literature discussing how to accomplish them. Using the definition of "disciplined inquiry" provided by Cronbach and Suppes (1969), which defines disciplined inquiry as the…

The Inductive Reasoning and Analytical Reasoning tests of the Johnson O'Connor Research Foundation have been analyzed in a factorial study including marker tests for two commonly recognized reasoning factors, induction (three tests) and logical reasoning (two tests). The primary purpose of the study was to determine the extent to which the Johnson…

The Group Assessment of Logical Thinking (GALT) instrument has been widely used to gather cross-cultural data regarding the acquisition of logical thinking skills in adolescent children. This study of West German adolescents using the instrument adds further comparative data regarding the development of logical thinking skills. Additional data…

Analogy is widely considered to be an important mechanism of scientific thinking and a source of creative insight in theory development. In this paper the implicit constraints that determine analogical soundness are considered. It first examines the constraints that govern analogical reasoning as it is predicted today. The scientific uses of…

Courses designed to teach problem-solving and creativity, which are relatively new additions to college curricula, are discussed, along with their intellectual foundations and research on these two processes. The teaching of these processes involves the following course goals: teaching a specific subject, generally useful skills, and professional…

Tautologies in student essays, arguments that most commonly assume the truth or self-evidence of themselves without relationship to something other than themselves, can be identified whenever an essay contains a series of nonsuccessive, noncumulative discourse units. Three kinds of tautologies in student papers are tautologies of redundancy,…

Problems in mathematics instruction in Thailand that are related to language include the simultaneous use of both traditional Thai numerals and Hindu-Arabic numerals, misunderstanding of mathematics problems for cultural reasons, and/or difficulty in understanding problem context. Research has shown that elementary and secondary school children…

Diana Laffin and Maggie Wilson want their pupils to connect with people in the past and to experience some of their emotions. The emotional factor is a difficult one in history, both for pupils and professional historians. When studying Eden's actions at Suez, for example, what we lack is a proper insight into the immediate pressures he faced and…

One aspect of Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development was tested in this research project. It was hypothesized that an adult individual in the concrete stage of development is able to use seriation and classification in dealing with concrete objects, but is unable to think in terms of possibilities. An individual operating on the formal…

Preservice elementary teachers' use of examples in recognizing and disproving invalid deductive arguments related to topics in elementary school mathematics was examined. Two forms of the Classroom Logic Test were developed, one multiple choice and one free response. Subjects were asked to judge the correctness of arguments and, if incorrect,…

Many educators believe that, regardless of innate abilities and acquired skills, students at different educational levels do not think in the same way. To account for these differences, 119 female students representing four educational levels (high school seniors to graduate students) completed the Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal Form A…

This study investigates the training of inner-city first and second graders in Piagetian classification skills. Twenty boys and 20 girls were pretested for necessary baseline knowledge and were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. Both groups were given training programs intended to assist the children in developing classification…

Children aged 2-1/2 to 3-1/2 years in three preschool programs were given a test battery consisting of classification, relations, and conservation tasks. One program (Ausubelian) was formal and two programs (Piagetian and Tradition) were informal. Posttest data for the first year of a three-year longitudinal study indicated significantly superior…

In the perspective on cognitive development provided by Jean Piaget, the elaboration of cognitive skills is possible and acceptable, although it is objectionable and perhaps impossible to attempt to accelerate those skills. The explicit teaching of reasoning skills is necessary since not every student attains the formal operational level without…

The purpose of this investigation was to classify a sample of high school biology students into concrete and formal operational levels using three separate instruments: (1) a battery of Piagetian tasks (the pendulum, bending rods, and the balance beam); (2) a written biology examination consisting of questions requiring concrete and formal…