The purpose of this study was to compare traditional classification training for a set of abstract concepts with multiple-relations training consisting of inference practice and the use of a content diagram. To examine this, 200 undergraduate and graduate psychology students completed a Web-based tutorial covering the abstract concepts of a…

Twenty-four eleventh grade students attending a month-long, summer civic-leadership institute in a Pacific Northwest city participated in a study that examined their dialectical reasoning on civic issues. This reasoning was elicited through written scaffolding, with students guided explicitly to compose essays arguing for or against a position on…

One of three related documents produced in response to a need for direct instruction in thinking skills at the secondary level, this teaching guide for Book One and Book Two of "Thinking Through Language" is intended for junior or senior high school English teachers. The guide contains an introduction and summaries of Book One and Book Two,…

One of three related documents produced in response to a need for direct instruction in thinking skills, this program for middle school or junior high school students bases its approach on involvement of students in direct experiences. The book contains four units. Focusing on perception, Unit 1: "Experiencing the Arts" begins with ways sensory…

This instructional manual is designed to accompany "Lisa," a philosophy reader for 7th, 8th, and 9th grade students (ED 137 215). The aim of the course is to encourage children to consider and reflect upon their moral values. Concerned with ethics, "Lisa" is an attempt to understand moral conduct. Emphasis is on having the students learn to think…

Illinois Central College's Development of Operational Reasoning Skills (DOORS) project, which is based on Piaget's developmental theory and learning cycle strategy, is described. The project provides a multidisciplinary freshman core program focusing on the improvement of student reasoning abilities. For each of the six DOORS courses--English,…

This report reviews major theoretical and empirical studies concerning the process of creativity and the skills involved in creating art. Part I describes process studies with adult subjects engaged in activities such as poetry writing, editing, and critiquing a poem. Ten amateur and ten professional poets were subjects. These studies analyzed the…

Law-related education programs for elementary school should be based on children's perceptions of reality. Psychologist Jean Piaget's studies of cognitive development indicate that children constantly reconstruct reality as they undergo new experiences. Children at early developmental stages may not be capable of understanding the origin and…

Explores developmental patterns in children from kindergarten through grade six. Highlights physical development, including height, activity level, motor skills, and health; mental development, including abstract thought, academic focus, learning difficulties, subject preferences, and creativity; psychosocial development, including interpersonal…

This paper describes a study to determine whether students can, with appropriate instructional materials, develop and apply a knowledge of art concepts. An opening section reviews research on concept acquisition. This study utilized a concept acquisition model developed in 1970 by R. Gagne. Gagne's model proposed that concepts are learned through…

For this study, the second in the cross sectional series, based on the Conceptual Learning and Development (CLD) model, assessment batteries were developed to determine each child's level of attainment and related use of the concepts "equilateral triangle,""cutting tool,""noun," and "tree." Batteries were…

For this study, the second in the cross sectional series, based on the Conceptual Learning and Development (CLD) model, assessment batteries were developed to determine each child's level of concept attainment and also the related use of the concepts "equilateral triangle,""cutting tool,""noun," and "tree."…

In 1986 the United States (U.S.)-Japan Seminar on Mathematical Problem Solving convened to compare the state of problem solving in the classroom and in research in the two countries. The data and results given in this paper are the results of research conducted in the United States in response to the 1986 seminar. The U.S. and Japanese research…

Curricular development in undergraduate programs in the biological, physical, and mathematical sciences at a number of colleges and universities are described. One common theme is the continuing interest in computers in higher education. As the student bodies of many campuses become more heterogeneous with increasing enrollments of minorities and…

This volume includes reports of two research projects of the Kansas Center for Research in Early Childhood Education. The first project, entitled Individual Analysis of Reading Prerequisites and Curriculum Content, is represented by two studies: (1) A Study of a Pretraining Program and Its Effect on a Subsequent Program for a Left-Right…