Research related to the training and measurement of cognitive skills (effective behaviors in situations in which events must be organized or structured in some way) represents a point of common ground between the educator and the behavioral scientist. That we so seldom train for generalized cognitive skills is paradoxical, for most authorities…

Although the study of learning theory can produce principles applicable to the design of instruction, virtually no instructional materials in existence today have deliberately been prepared on the basis of such principles. Terms used in four different learning theories--motivation, (Neal Miller); stimulus control (Skinner); distinctive conditions…

Several tasks were developed to investigate adolescents' ability to see correlations in data and to test hypotheses. Emphasis was placed on methodology: do students clearly understand the problem and do the tasks tap the skills they claim to? The 20 ninth-grade and 20 eleventh-grade boys and 15 college freshmen were tested. Most students did…

In this study, 80 prospective elementary school teachers, having no teaching experience, were administered six Piagetian tasks in order to classify them as concrete or formal thinkers. They were then required to complete a series of teaching tasks consisting of two phases. Phase I required the subjects to prepare a lesson plan, arrange a series of…

This paper is concerned with the question of whether and why individuals who know more about a particular knowledge domain acquire domain-related information more readily than individuals who know less about the domain. A conceptual framework is presented that hypothesizes differences in the memory structure of the high-knowledge and low-knowledge…

The editors of this review have focused on four purposes: (1) to portray the state of knowledge in science education, (2) to describe any existing trends, (3) to identify areas which need to be researched, and (4) to provide tentative answers to pertinent problems, if any seem to emerge from the research. Research studies reviewed have been…

This project researched three questions related to the production of cognitive skills in formal elementary and secondary education. The first question dealt with the pattern of student learning over time. It was found that, generally, the elasticity of grade eight knowledge with respect to grade eight school inputs is higher than the elasticity of…

Preliminary results from a longitudinal study of English-speaking children and adults learning Dutch in natural situations suggest that 12- to 15-year-olds learned faster than either older or younger subjects during their first 6 months in Holland. All age differences had disappeared in a group of advanced subjects (English-speakers who had been…

The purpose of this study was the development and validation of a paper-and-pencil instrument to assess the formal stage of development as defined by Piaget. Initially, a 42-item test was constructed; item content included syllogisms, verbal analogies, combinatorial and probabilistic reasoning, and questions similar to Piagetian tasks. This…

This study was designed to compare the effects of three methods of mathematics instruction on variables related to transfer of learning. The three methods compared were expository, rule-and-example, and discovery; the dependent variables involved representational, contextual, and difficulty components of the domain of transfer, Students (N = 180)…

This document describes an empirical study on the patterns of teacher behavior and a comparison of student outcomes from two settings where different programs (types of curricula) were used. The two psychological positions identified within the curricula were stated to have been operationalized in the two programs developed for the elementary…

The purpose of this paper is to show that the explanations of understanding as a nonknowledge concept, an "attainment" in behavior, and as a kind of theoretical knowing or "knowing that" which is exhibited by means of language propositions, are inadequate. It is also shown that the following assumption regarding understanding…

Considered are ways in which developmental theories, methodologies, and research findings may be used to clarify the concept of experiential deficiencies of deaf children. Examined are the effects on deaf children of deprivations in physical experiences (such as the reduction of information about objects provided by auditory feedback) and in…

This Middlebury College summer 1974 commencement address is an informal presentation of the author's experiences as a language learner. The effectiveness of such pedagogical methods as the grammar-translation, audio-lingual, and "balanced" approaches, and of language learning with the aid of an informant, is discussed. It is concluded that, given…

An educational experiment concerning second language acquisition is described in this report. It is hypothesized that low ethnocentrism, positive attitudes toward the other group, and an integrative orientation toward language comprise high motivation, with the opposite criteria controlling low motivation. Puerto Rican children involved in the…