Even when the socioeconomic background is controlled, there is still a difference between blacks and whites in academic achievement. Studies have shown that, though social class is a factor in that difference, ethnicity is the primary factor. This report discusses ideologies that have tried to explain that ethnic difference. It discusses the…

This paper takes the position that logical knowledge is distinct from conceptual and procedural knowledge and can make a unique contribution to the understanding of knowledge acquisition. This view of logical knowledge departs from the traditional Piagetian view of stages and the overriding view of logic as the sole means of constructing new…

The extent to which schooling brings about change in the rank order of students along the hierarchies of intelligence is a pervasive sociological concern. Until quite recently the emerging consensus was that schooling is relatively ineffective in this regard and that intelligence is largely exogenous to the educational process. A study to…

The middle school grades are a period of transition: a time in the formal educational process when immature children develop into young adolescents who are better prepared for the rigors of higher education and life itself. In order to help children master the sophisticated social studies concepts and skills necessary for higher secondary…

This paper describes the evolution of a graduate program in education called "Cognitive Development and Teaching Strategy." The thesis of the course is that developmental theory offers insights which can help teachers create a "thinking environment" in their classrooms. Each successive version of the course exemplified a different view of the…

These proceedings contain presentations from a conference whose major topics were real-world intelligence, artificial intelligence, and linkage between the education and corporate sectors. "People, Perspectives...Potential and Possibilities" (Elyse S. Fleming), which was the conference's closing speech, briefly summarizes the information…

In a collaborative project with Alverno College, 22 elementary and secondary schools created teacher designed plans for the infusion of critical thinking across the curriculum, developing the role of the teacher as change agent. Distinctive features of the program included a focus on critical thinking as an ability to be developed by students,…

The article describes a curriculum used in gifted programming which is based on Guilford's Structure of Intellect (SOI) theory of intelligence. Sourcebooks and individual SOI modules have been developed to train over 90 kinds of intellectual ability. Five categories of intellectual ability are defined (cognition, memory, evaluation, convergent…

The level of thinking that is characteristic of the typical college freshman and the skills needed by college science courses are addressed, and the Development of Reasoning in Science project (Project DORIS) at California State University, Fullerton, is described. While the typical college freshman functions at the concrete level of thinking,…

In order to investigate the development of word-formation abilities, 3-, 5-, and 7-year-olds were asked to act out with toys, judge, and make up sentences containing instances of class extension. Some sample sentences are "Can you upside-down the clown?" and "Broom the spoon." Children dealt with such sentences in much the same…

The growth model of intelligence; i.e. intelligence is the product of genetics plus environment (I.Q.=G+E), is discussed and questioned. If the growth model is discarded, formulating the problem of the development of intelligence in different ways and thinking of different possible technologies for changing intelligence can begin. The child…

An instructional system that is both efficient and effective should present information so that it is easily processed by learners and so that the cognitive structures resulting from instruction correspond to the structure of the content to be learned. This paper presents a discussion of methods for describing content structure and cognitive…

A distinction can be made between the term "creativity" and creative thinking skills. Creativity typically refers to a talent for original and masterful production in the arts and sciences, and there is scant evidence that teachers have any influence on creativity of this kind. Creative thinking refers to a group of six thinking skills that if…

The primary goal of early reading instruction, according to this paper, should be to teach children to comprehend written discourse in a manner similar to that for oral discourse because both types of discourse require decoding ability--graphic or acoustic. The paper asserts that to simply design reading instruction to achieve the subgoal of…

Part III of a 3-part report. See also AA 501 768, AA 501 769, and AA 501 771, and AA 501 772.