Examined children's naturally occurring arguments sampled from transcripts of discussions in fourth-grade classrooms. Found that children's arguments had vague referring expressions, sometimes did not contain explicit conclusions, and seemed to lack explicit warrants to authorize conclusions. Missing or oblique information was usually given in the…

Ninth and 12th graders completed intellectual ability measures and engaged in reasoning about hypothetical arguments that were either consistent or inconsistent with their own theories. Results indicated that intellectual and verbal ability predicted each of several reasoning indexes. Neither ability measures nor age were related to reasoning…

Presents a logical reasoning problem pivotal to the novel "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" and discusses it at two levels. (Author/NB)

One third-year clinical clerkship in pediatrics has included Sherlock Holmes mysteries in its introductory curriculum, providing students with a model clinical problem-solving process and a list of issues on which they will need information. The nonclinical cases provide an effective and entertaining vehicle for learning clinical reasoning. (MSE)

Discusses the use of truth tables to help students establish valid or invalid conclusions under a given set of premises. Provides several inference examples using the truth table. (YP)

Three experiments investigated children's typical errors in judging the truth of universally quantified conditional sentences containing "P and not-Q." The error survived on sentences referring to particular things. For second- and fifth-graders, the error survived for nonuniversally quantified conditionals, and for second-graders, the…

The experience of the West Virginia University School of Pharmacy with a course in non-prescription drugs that emphasizes problem-solving through pattern recognition illustrates that when thinking skills are taught, students value, remember, and can use more of the concepts they study. (MSE)

Discusses problems with the use of "technical logic," transmuted into "comp-logic," in composition classrooms and textbooks. Maintains that students can produce more effective argumentative discourse by borrowing from either modern informal logic or neglected classical stasis theory. (SR)

Reviews controversies over different conceptions of critical thinking and its application to education. Discusses the relevance to and impact of critical thinking on bibliographic instruction. (JKP)

Examined whether the use of superordinate terms in 206 children's definitions is predictable by relevance theory. Children (ages 5-10) gave definitions for 16 basic-level words and 4 superordinate words from natural kind and artifact semantic domains. Superordinate terms were used more frequently when they supported more inferences. Findings…

Examines changes in the philosophy of science related to changes in scientific knowledge. Discusses the nature of philosophy, ambiguity in the use of science, art and science, political ethics and science, logical thought, science in social reality, links to industrial society, and values and goals for science teaching. (LZ)

Explains the importance of competence in the use of informal logic for physical education and educational sport teachers/managers. The article discusses historical background, critical thinking as applied to managerial roles, the need to think clearly, and aspects of critical thinking, argument development, ambiguity, acceptable and unacceptable…

This article details an approach to teaching one step in a mathematics word-problem-solving strategy, that of organizing the facts. A lesson plan is offered which involves directed instruction and supervised practice in five strategies for organizing facts. (DB)

A discussion of the Socratic method for college-level teaching looks at the three primary components of the method (systematic questioning, inductive reasoning, and universal definitions) and several additional relevant elements, including the testing of hypotheses and use of background information. One teacher's classroom techniques are…

Presents literature-based elementary mathematics activities for the primary and intermediate grades. The activites are adapted from "Math and Literature, K-3," by the author of this article. (SM)