We explore the immediate and longer term consequences of different types of instruction about a central topic in middle school science: the "Control of Variables Strategy" (CVS). CVS represents the procedural and conceptual basis for designing simple, unconfounded experiments, such that unambiguous causal inferences can be made. CVS…

Background: The study investigated a small range of cognitive abilities, related to visual-spatial intelligence, in adolescents. This specific range of cognitive abilities was termed "graphic abilities" and defined as a range of abilities to visualise and think in three dimensions, originating in the domain of visual-spatial…

This presentation deals with the topic of ethnic/racial identity development, acknowledging the importance of recognizing the multicultural component in identity formation. The literature has pointed to several areas that are central to effective prejudice-prevention and prejudice-reduction programming, among them an emphasis on cognitive…

A recent initiative by the Education Department of Western Australia is seeking to extend the use of telematics (audiographic teleconferencing) for delivery of educational services to gifted and talented students in rural and remote areas. The aim of the project is to extend and apply innovative approaches to teaching via audiographics, and to…

This study surveyed 169 freshman students at Wheelock College to identify generational shifts in play experiences, students' play histories, later college and placement site experiences, and the extent to which play was a part of students' professional identities. Subjects in the study were primarily Caucasian females between 17 and 19 years of…

Lev Vygotsky argues that natural properties as well as social relations, constrain--and therefore make possible--the social construction of a child's higher psychological processes. Most social constructivists in the cultural-historical tradition focus on three Vygotskian tenets: (1) the internalization of auxiliary cultural means or signs…

This study compared the central capacity and the modularity models for explaining language processing in kindergarten children. Using a microcomputer, 19 kindergarten children completed a visual letter-matching task that required a manual response. An auditory tone was emitted by the computer in a separate trial also requiring a press. For the…

Students' exposure to the Taoist thinking pattern should have a significant meaning in their cognitive development and life enrichment. The thinking pattern reflected in Taoist discourse is in sharp contrast to what is demonstrated in Aristotelian rhetoric. The circular thinking pattern usually resided in a paradoxical and/or relativistic…

This paper presents three experiments examining competence in the domain of proportional reasoning in several age groups (adult, and children in kindergarten, first, third, and fifth grade). In the three experiments, subjects indicated which of two flower boxes had the greater density of flowers. In experiments 1 and 2, the flowers were presented…

The view of musical creativity as spanning a continuum from the noises of the unschooled young child to the artistry of the trained professional fails to account for fundamental, developmental differences in the creators' perspectives. This paper seeks to distinguish two ways in which the creative functioning of the child or novice differ from…

Educators, scholars, and researchers in the United States convened at the Forum on Early Childhood Science, Mathematics, and Technology Education to discuss how, when, and even if science, mathematics, and technology should be taught to pre-kindergarten children. The product of that forum, this book summarizes some of the latest thinking about…

Young children often have difficulty with understanding money in a formal school setting, yet most mathematics textbooks are virtually identical in how they teach second graders about money and do not take into account the cognitive stages of children's development. This research examined the effectiveness of traditional and alternative classroom…

This paper helps to clarify the role of empirical evidence in psychological and epistemological theories. Following Galileo's idealization, epistemological theories do not describe the behavior of individuals in the real world. It is only when the "impediments" of the real subjects are gradually removed by experimental manipulation that…

The first part of this study examined children's concepts of "preference of racial diversities" (PRD); nonviolent conflict-resolution (NCR); and "negative peace" (NP), defined as "peace in contrast to war." The first part also assessed children's mental development. The second part examined the relation of children's…

This study investigated the independent strategy development of 7- to 12-year-old children from the suburbs of Brisbane, Australia in solving a series of novel, two- and three-dimensional combinatorial problems. For each of the problem types, a sequence of five, increasingly complex, strategies was identified from the children's actions and…