This report presents the results of a study, based on 500 responses to a survey mailed to a structured sample of school administrators, on the problems and solutions of developing thinking and reasoning skills in the schools. Provided are analyses of the issue, examples of successful practices, and advice from school administrators and…

This booklet contains proceedings of the Fourth Conference of the University/Urban Schools National Task Force. The conference was held to present information about four programs designed to help high school students to sharpen their reasoning skills. Criteria for program development state that: (1) the program can be taught to teachers in a…

The consistency of verbal and/or visual learning strategy and the effects of such strategies on the recall of concrete and abstract prose by third and fourth grade students were investigated. Using a learning strategy screening procedure, students were classified as demonstrating high, medium, or low dominance of verbal or visual learning…

Students (N=49) enrolled in a physics course for elementary teachers were evaluated for their abilities to use: (1) combinatorial logic; (2) separation and control of variables; (3) proportional reasoning; and (4) reciprocal implications. Performance of four Piagetian tasks during interviews was treated as a measure of the degree to which students…

A sample of 217 students (from grades 4 to 8) who were enrolled in an elementary school science-oriented gifted and talented program were compared to 91 mainstreamed subjects in grades 7 through 10. Assessement instruments included: a battery of Piagetian measures designed to assess combinatorial reasoning, probabilistic reasoning, and the ability…

The Conceptual Learning and Development (CLD) Model suggests four successive levels of concept learning: (1) concrete--recognizing an object which has been encountered previously; (2) identity--recognizing a known object when it appears in a different spatial, time, or sensory perspective; (3) classificatory--generalizing that two items are alike…

Levels of learning can probably be measured by questions containing various conceptual dimensions which relate to the amount of thinking or creativity required to complete the questions. A method for measuring concept levels in child development course material was evaluated. Student proctors (N=41) and instructors (N=6) rated 73 short-answer…

Research on abstract categorical reasoning has shown that students with "A" grade point averages (GPA) have limited, better and often less, reasoning ability than students with lower GPA's. A similar effect was also found when testing "bright" and "dull" subjects. An analysis of this effect was conducted using the component model of categorical…

CONCEPT FORMATION IN 50 KINDERGARTENERS WAS STUDIED BY REQUIRING THE CHILDREN TO SORT CARDS ACCORDING TO ONE OF FOUR ATTRIBUTES OF THREE DIFFERENT DIMENSIONS. THE OBJECTIVE WAS TO EXPLORE THE VALIDITY AND LIMITATIONS OF AN ALL-OR-NONE LEARNING MODEL FOR COMPLEX CLASSIFYING RESPONSES. INFORMATION WAS PRESENTED TO THE SUBJECT BY TWO POSITIVE…

The contributions of psychology, theoretically and experimentally, to university teaching are examined from the perspective of educational epistemology. The most basic theoretical contribution that psychology has made to cognitive learning has been the delineation of a unit of thinking, the concept, which acts as an organizer of experience. The…

Ability to reason clearly and efficiently is perhaps the single most important learning objective common to all subjects and to all aspects of the schooling situation. In order to design an effective reading comprehension program, teachers and program planners must assess children's logical abilities. This discussion provides a review of some of…

This study investigated developmental differences in the use of the common features abstraction strategy and the exemplar learning strategy for concept acquisition. Subjects were 30 second graders and 30 fifth graders. The concepts to be learned were two categories of artificial animals which differed on five dimensions. Each dimension had three…

PIAGET HAS BEEN CONCERNED WITH THE ASSESSMENT OF THE PRESENCE OR ABSENCE OF CONSERVATION AND RELATED PROCESSES, BUT HE HAS NOT FOCUSED EXPERIMENTALLY ON THE FACTORS WHICH CAN ACCOUNT FOR THE LEARNING OF CONSERVATION. TO INVESTIGATE SUCH FACTORS, RESEARCH WAS CONDUCTED (1) TO DETERMINE THE RELATIVE EFFECTIVENESS OF TWO PARTICULAR GROUP TRAINING…

Research has indicated that one significant deficiency in the intellectual capabilities of disadvantaged children is a disability in abstract thinking. Although all very young children lack this ability, the environment of the middle class child provides an opportunity so that as this child matures, the ability to think in abstract terms naturally…

This paper examines whether language development can be understood epigenetically in the same manner and based on the same principles with which Piaget has analyzed intellectual-cognitive development generally. The study is subdivided into four parts: (1) some principles in Piaget's system (the epigenetic principle, the genetic circle, and the…