Ethnographers generally allow educational psychology to define research problems, to set limits on what they can study, and to dictate some key theoretical concepts. As a consequence, lacunae in descriptions of complexities in the intellectual lives of children have not been filled in by ethnographers. Problems in the focus and methods of…

A GROUP OF 46 5-YEAR-OLDS, 24 GIRLS AND 22 BOYS, AND 21 4-YEAR-OLDS, 11 GIRLS AND 10 BOYS, PARTICIPATED IN A STUDY TO DETERMINE THE STYLES OF CATEGORIZATION EMPLOYED BY PRESCHOOL AND KINDERGARTEN CHILDREN. FOUR CATEGORIZING STYLES WERE DEFINED AND USED IN THE STUDY--DESCRIPTIVE PART-WHOLE--E.G., CLASSIFYING HUMAN FIGURES BECAUSE "THEY ALL HAVE…

Engineering is a profession likely to attract the individual who seeks direct, sure lines to follow in life where he can avoid the tension of ambiguous or novel ideas, the sensitive encounters of interpersonal relations, and can derive satisfaction from tangible accomplishments. The supposition is that this individual, regardless of ability or…

This monograph, published by the Science Education Programme for Africa (SEPA), is intended to help teachers and teacher educators with the skills and attitudes relating to learning science through activities designed to make the learner the center of attention. Presented is a review of Bruner's learning theory, Piaget's theory of intellectual…

Because the pressure of technological advancement has made teaching factual knowledge increasingly difficult, educators have been developing curriculums to transmit intellectual processes applicable to many tasks instead of subject matter content. One of the 20 educational Follow Through programs, the Tucson Early Education Model, surveyed 42…

Described is an empirical and rational inquiry into the formation of a small set of special or geometrical concepts of young children. The approach taken by the author is to attempt to specify intellectual growth in one particular area, a child's acquisition of diagonality, in such a way as to be representative. That is, to give a clean portrayal…

The purpose of this investigation was to develop and test an experimental strategy for the modification of socialization practices, which were hypothesized to affect the development of intellectual skills in young children. Experimental and control groups for this experiment were randomly selected from the population of first grade students in a…

Four seventh grade life science classes, given curriculum materials based upon Piagetian theories of intellectual development and Skinner's theories of secondary reinforcement, were compared with four control classes from the same school districts. Nine students from each class, who(at the pretest) were at the concrete operations stage of…

Suggests that although Piaget's psychological theory is developmental and dialectical in a general way, the lack of a developed philosophical basis leads to the subordination of a dialectical approach to static, anti-dialectical concepts. Hegel's theory of interaction and contradiction is examined to show that dialectical theory has a precise…

On the basis of two experiments on comprehension, it is argued that children go through at least three stages in acquiring the deictic contrasts between "here and there," and between "this and that." Children follow different routes through these states, since they choose different starting points in mastering deitic contrasts.…

A critical review. Evidence supporting the sibling-tutoring explanation is evaluated and alternatives are presented. Alternatives include age spacing as an explanation for the intelligence discontinuity of last borns, and the idea that only children are more likely to come from single-parent homes. (BB)

Kindergarten through fourth graders (N=170) were tested for conservation and then interviewed following the presentation of a story about an elderly woman's death, in an attempt to assess children's understanding of 3 concepts: irrevocability, cessation of bodily processes, and universality. (Author/JMB)

A multivariate modification of the cross-lagged panel correlation paradigm was applied to data from 4 subgroups of students tested and retested in fifth, seventh, ninth, and eleventh grades on 16 essentially identical cognitive measures. Results suggested that the test of aural comprehension was tapping the causal factors involved in intellectual…