This guide for elementary grade teachers is designed to present a perspective for the social studies which will enable teachers, and hence their students, "to discern coherence, continuity and preciseness in the study of human affairs." It reflects on interdisciplinary approach, based on the relatedness of the social sciences and strongly…

To explore the independence, reliability, and validity of metadimensional measures, 112 boys were interviewed at the 9th and 12th grade levels to obtain self-concept data for an analysis of nine structural, self-concept metadimensions, and other characteristics of self-referent material. Self-referent sentences, defined as those indicative of…

This report describes a study instituted to determine whether attitude scales standardized on a white population falter when applied to black subjects. The subjects were 656 white and black college students, 457 of these being middle class white students, 29 middle class black students, and 70 lower class black students. Eight semantic…

Reported is a study related to diagnosing elements of propositional thinking in the cognitive functioning of 62 sixth- and seventh-grade students. The rationale is based on the work of Piaget and others. Instruments used to diagnose levels of abstract thinking involved using computer simulated experiments (CSE). The direct and indirect effects of…

This study investigated the performance of three groups of educationally advantaged and educationally disadvantaged eighth grade boys on each of five measures of cognitive, linguistic, and intellectual functioning. The five measures included: (1) general intelligence, (2) field dependence assessed by an embedded-figures task, (3) level of…

This study examines the relationship between a child's concept of geographic and territorial relationships and his competence on classification and class inclusion measures. Jean Piaget's stages of development and studies conducted by other investigators (Jahoda, 1964; Stoltman, 1971; Rand and Towler, 1973; Flavell, 1963; Asher, et al, 1971;…

The problem of this research was to construct a list of behaviorally specifiable objectives for secondary school teachers to use in teaching the higher cognitive skills (ie., problem solving, rational thinking, and discovery) as well as subject matter. Process, as contrasted with content, was the focus. The specific Thought Process Objectives are…

Four types of proportionality problems were administered to: (1) secondary school students who were enrolled in Project Physics, and (2) students not enrolled in physics. Both samples were randomly selected. Groups were not found to differ significantly in problem solving ability but both revealed that the ability to solve certain problems was…

Debates as to the appropriateness of using the Karplus Islands Puzzle as an instrument to assess formal-operational thought. (CP)

After participating in a 4-week demonstration project focusing on enriching skills in cognition, memory, convergent and divergent thinking, creativity, and problem solving, 68 potentially gifted 4- and 5- year-olds (many from culturally-diverse and/or low socioeconomic backgrounds) made significant gains in their ability to reason with figures and…

Two articles briefly review experiences of secondary schools using DIALOG's Classroom Instruction Program, and four New Jersey school districts that have experimented with using Dow Jones News/Retrieval Service to teach online searching at both the elementary and secondary levels. An annotated bibliography lists 12 relevant journal articles and…

Hypothesizes that the human brain localizes mental operations which are integrated in the performance of cognitive tasks such as reading. Provides support of this hypothesis from studies in neural imaging, mental imagery, timing, and memory. (RT)

Investigates whether children's use of reasoning differs in child-child and adult-child discussions of moral dilemmas. Supports Piaget's contention that moral discussions with peers feature a more spontaneous use of reasoning than do discussions with adults. (HOD)

Describes the approach taken in an education computing course for pre- and in-service teachers. Outlines the basic operational, analytical, and evaluation skills that are emphasized in the course, suggesting that these skills go beyond the attainment of computer literacy and can assist in the effective use of computers. (ML)

We examine a prospective high school teacher's instructional representations of rate of change and right triangle trigonometry to investigate his interpretation and understanding in relation to the development of proportional reasoning. Despite a constant effort by the subject to resort to "real life" examples in order to give meaning to his…