This Yugoslavian study aimed to describe the ways in which mothers are (or are not) using the opportunity, created by interacting with their children on tasks which are in the child's Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), to foster the child's metacognitive development. The underlying assumption of this study on metacognition is derived from the…

How do good science students perceive the process of learning science? What occurs in the learning process that motivates students to accept the challenge of pursuing a career in science? This paper reports on panel discussions held by teams of medical students, research science doctoral students, science education students, and high school…

In dynamical theory, mathematical understanding is considered to be that of a person (or group) of a topic (or problem) in a situation or setting. This paper compares the interactions between the situations and the mathematical understandings of two students by comparing the growth in understanding within a Fibonacci sequence setting in which…

The analysis reported in this paper is part of a year-long first-grade teaching experiment and focuses on the teacher's proactive role in supporting students' mathematical growth in an inquiry mathematics classroom. Within the project classroom, the teacher often redescribed and notated students' responses so that what students had done…

At present, there are no formal tests to assess adequately the ways in which a child processes information. Furthermore, scores on current measures cannot be directly interpreted, with few exceptions, as direct measures of cognitive processes, and results are difficult to translate directly into remediation goals or instructional objectives.…

The Infant Health and Development Program (IHDP), an eight-site randomized controlled trial of a comprehensive intervention program combining home visits, child centers, and parent meetings with pediatric follow-up and referral, effectively reduced the incidence of health and developmental problems in a sample of 377 low birth weight, premature…

The purpose of this study was to explore the influence of the security of mother-infant attachment and of infants' cognitive development on mothers' and infants' ability to coordinate their attention to objects with the attention of another person. Fifty-eight 15- to 19-month-olds were videotaped for 10 minutes while they played with toys near…

This paper contains a poetry reading presented to a meeting on poetic narrative and educational development. The presentation was based on the theory that the field of philosophy of education should include the realm of the possible as created and populated by the imagination, and often portrayed by works of art. The poems consist of attempts to…

Noting children's limited opportunities for cross-age interaction, this paper discusses the benefits of mixed-aged groupings of preschool and elementary school children for social and intellectual development. The benefits for older children and younger children are considered in turn, and general benefits to both groups and their adult caregivers…

This paper presents a brief overview of the array of neuroscience research as it applies to play and child development. The paper discusses research showing the importance of play for brain growth and child development, and recommends that families, schools and other social and corporate institutions rearrange their attitudes and priorities about…

The "epistemological reflection model" of Marcia Baxter Magolda is reviewed, and the implications of her work for the education of college students are considered. Four levels of knowing are postulated by Baxter Magolda; these are "Absolute" knowing, "Transitional" knowing, "Independent" knowing, and…

This paper defines and discusses the term "differentiation" as it is applied in gifted and talented education programs. It begins by describing three components that are most notably associated with differentiation: content (what is being taught); process (how it is being taught); and product (tangible results produced that are based on…

This study used a sample of 3- and 4-year-old children of female respondents from the 1986 National Longitudinal Surveys Youth Cohort to analyze the relationship between maternal labor supply and children's cognitive development. Respondents were 21 to 29 years old in 1986. Thus, the sample consisted of children of relatively young mothers.…

Two theoretical frameworks, which underlie education programs for young Limited-English-Proficient (LEP) children, are explored: cognitive/developmental and maturational/linguistic theories. The cognitive/developmental view supports the idea that intellectual and language growth and learning are action oriented and variable among young children…

This paper applies value-added analysis to study the cognitive development of disabled high school sophomores over the period 1980-1982, in order to determine whether staying in school yields any cognitive return for students with disabilities and to identify those school factors that influence the relationship between staying in school and…