Exposes the structural-functionalist roots of Kohlberg's theory of moral development, questioning the application of Kohlberg's ideas in the classroom, reviewing Kohlberg's Just Community model, examining Durkheim's and Dreeben's theories and their similarity to Kohlberg's moral theory, critiquing Kohlberg's conception of the Just Community…

Examined third- and seventh-graders' and college students' thinking regarding different types of disagreements. Found that participants' thinking was constrained by the realm and form of the disagreement. At all ages, participants judged some disagreements acceptable and others unacceptable, described disagreements based on different attributes,…

Review of research on recess shows how its presence or absence affects children's brain development, health and physical development, attention, memory, social and emotional adjustment, language development, and classroom behavior. Despite demonstrated benefits, recess is endangered by pressures on schools to increase achievement. (Contains 52…

Age-related changes in representational flexibility are a characteristic feature of declarative memory development. The authors suggest that a qualitative shift in the nature of infants' memory representations accounts for increasing memory flexibility with age. We will argue that a comprehensive theory of declarative memory development must (1)…

What capabilities are required for an organism to evince an "explicit" understanding of gaze as a mentalistic phenomenon? One possibility is that mentalistic interpretations of gaze, like concepts of unseen, supernatural beings, are culturally-specific concepts, acquired through cultural learning. These abstract concepts may either require a…

Adolescence is a developmental transition period during which there are profound transformations in emotional, cognitive, and behavioral systems. Despite being a time of rapid development and increasing rates of suicidality, limited research has examined possible interrelationships. Through the use of a case study, this paper illustrates the role…

Background: When developing a domain-specific academic self-concept, students are not restricted to social comparisons; they may also make temporal or dimensional comparisons. Aims: The main purpose of this study was to examine whether these different types of comparison trigger paradoxical effects of praise and criticism in the sense described by…

The "coin of the realm" in education today is student achievement, its measure, and its relationship to school accountability. An almost singular emphasis is placed on student achievement in "core" academic areas. The constructs of cognitive learning, student achievement, and instructional approach in agricultural education have been studied by…

Through the study of motor development, the physically educated person will understand that individuals develop at their own rate and require both time and practice to acquire new motor skills. The physically educated person needs to know about motor development in order to monitor his or her own change and become an independent learner.…

This research extends the range of domains within which children's gestures are found to play an important role in learning. The study involves children learning about balance, and the authors locate children's gestures within a relevant model of cognitive development--the representational redescription model (A. Karmiloff-Smith, 1992). The speech…

Cumulative experience with a variety of symbolic artifacts has been hypothesized as a source of young children's increasing sensitivity to new symbol-referent relations. Evidence for this hypothesis comes from transfer studies showing that experience with a relatively easy symbolic retrieval task improves performance on a more difficult task.…

Middle school students represent a wonderful target audience for introducing neurological concepts. The preteen years of the middle grades represent a time of incredible physical and mental development. Students in a seventh-grade classroom are experiencing dramatic physiological and psychological changes. Understanding the parts and functions of…

The present investigation explores and presents a theoretical model of instruction--applied literacy in second language education (ALL2E)--and suggests a contemporary view of the roles of grammar and formal evaluation within literature-based second language (L2) classrooms. Essentially, this article addresses the question "How can instruction and…

The experiments described in the lead articles by Kowalski and Zimiles and by O'Hanlon and Roberson examine factors that lead to color term acquisition. These experiments touch on the debate regarding the relative contributions of language and concepts in word learning. In this reflection, we examine how conclusions concerning the debate depend…

Early childhood education must bolster basic cognitive and social-emotional competencies to prepare children for authentic learning. The preschool educators should view academic skills and concepts as valuable tools in the process of developing essential competencies.