This study examined explanatory talk that occurred in families of preschool children during book readings between mother and child, and during mealtimes with the whole family. The study is part of a larger study, the Home School Study of Language and Literacy Development. Three-year-old children eligible for Head Start programs in the greater…

School personnel are concerned about the effects of family-of-origin issues on students' academic performance and psychological development. One area that has drawn particular interest in recent years is that of students who are children of alcoholics (COAs). Most literature related to student COAs has emphasized the idea that families with an…

As a person learns, his problem solving ability improves and one reason for this is the increased acquisition of "macro-rules" which make problem solving more efficient. An intelligent computer assisted learning (ICAI) system is being developed which automatically acquires the useful knowledge from the domain experts; as experts give the learning…

This paper describes a mathematics-centered thematic unit for 5th graders which organizes all the topics in the Houghton Mifflin Mathematics Program by combining critical thinking and whole language frameworks to help students retain, understand, and make active use of knowledge within and across domains. The unit connects inquiry, goals, critical…

This study examined the prelinguistic communicative behaviors of 48 young Israeli children with hearing impairments (ages 8 months to 49 months). Most subjects were severely hearing impaired. Ninety percent were born to hearing parents. A parent questionnaire utilizing a direct observation methodology in six situational contexts was selected,…

The prevailing view of secrets as undesirable or unhealthy is challenged in this exploration of the meaning and significance of secrecy. As a crucial dimension of human development, secrets lead to a child's awareness of inner space and external worlds. This in turn leads to the development of a sense of self, personal responsibility, autonomy,…

When William G. Perry (1968) developed his scheme of nine stages of cognitive development, most of which are experienced during the college years, he did not attempt to quantify it. Subsequently, T. D. Erwin (1983) constructed a scale that attempted to quantify the Perry scheme. His findings supported the overall conception of student development…

Changes and continuities in adolescents' optimal experiences over two years are explored in this study, and related to the development of affective and motivational patterns. Optimal experience, or flow, occurs when people do intrinsically rewarding activities in which they feel optimally challenged relative to their level of skills. The major…

This paper identifies a feature of human brain neural nets that may be described as the principle of ease of processing (PEP), and that, it is argued, is the primary force guiding a learner towards a target grammar. It is suggested that the same principle lies at the heart of Optimality Theory, which characterizes the course of language…

In educational research and evaluation, a sample of subjects usually received some type of programmatic treatment. Outcome scores for these students are then compared with outcome scores of a control or comparison group. M. Lewis and H. McGurk (1972) have pointed out that there are some implicit assumptions when this approach is applied to…

This pilot study examined attitudes toward play and how play is facilitated among early childhood teachers, administrators, and college educators. Classroom observations, interviews, and questionnaires were used to identify attitudes toward the value and relevance of play for early childhood development and education, respondents' knowledge base…

The principal focus of this study was the assessment of mathematics in primary education within Realistic Mathematics Education (RME), a mathematics reform movement begun in The Netherlands in the 1960s. The book that resulted from this study is comprised of seven chapters, the first four of which constitute part 1 and are the core of the work.…

Reuven Feuerstein's theory of Mediated Learning Experience was developed to explain individuals' different propensities for learning by linking those differences to an individual's exposure--through specific experiences--to his or her own culture, irrespective of its nature or level of conceptualization, technology, or institutionalized education.…

Recent research suggests the importance of social interaction in facilitating knowledge acquisition and transfer. The theory of mediated learning experience has recently been used to develop a teacher-student interactionist model that is especially applicable to high-risk students. In this model, teachers are involved as mediators in: (1)…

This 1990 study of 165 undergraduates considered the application of cognitive development theory to social justice education. The table of contents presents the following sections: (1) "Why apply cognitive development theory to social justice education?" (2) "What is cognitive development?" (3) "Setting the background and context for the study";…