Though rooted in neo-Piagetian research, constructivism is an avenue of research that departed from the neo-Piagetian mainstream 20 years ago and has continued on a distinct path of development. For constructivists, learning is not knowledge written on, or transplanted to, a person's mind as if the mind were a blank slate waiting to be written on…

A framework is suggested for presenting a student portfolio in a coherent fashion. The Cognitive Model for Assessing Portfolios (CMAP) is an organizer that arranges the processes associated with portfolios into the following three dimensions: (1) the stakeholder dimension, which identifies the viewpoints of individuals or groups with an interest…

One format for the student written journal in an interpersonal communication theory course uses three components--classroom journals, reading journals, and listening journals--to develop students' skills as competent communicators. Student journals can provide a format for learned skills and awareness which may be applied creatively, critically,…

A program, developed to train teachers to use the computer, is based on the belief that adults acquire computer literacy in the same way that children do: sequentially and with hands-on experience. Programming is taught first. Reliance is placed on peer teaching as well as teaching by a skilled instructor. The role of play is emphasized in…

Mentally retarded persons in sheltered workshops in West Virginia were studied in order to determine their learning styles and how these learning styles related to the populations studied by Witkin and others. (Witkin classified learning styles as either field independent--i.e. task oriented--or field-dependent--i.e., oriented to the social…

A two-year study is reported of the transfer of two literacy skills, narrative comprehension and learning from text, from elementary school children's first language (Spanish) to their second (English). For each skill, the primary research question was the degree to which the students' first language (L1) performance was predictive of their second…

Completed at Ohio State in 1942, this seminal dissertation presents a clearly thought out statement of the necessary goals of the social studies in a democracy as these relate to the learning process, to the content, and to the teaching methods employed in social studies instruction. The dissertation is arranged into seven chapters. Chapter 1,…

The first article, "LOGO and von Neumann Ideas," deals with the creation of new procedures based on procedures defined and stored in memory as LOGO lists of lists. This representation, which enables LOGO procedures to construct, modify, and run other LOGO procedures, is compared with basic computer concepts first formulated by John von…

To determine whether individual differences in student achievement and learning rate are reduced or eliminated by mastery instruction, 166 Navy trainees who had completed a computer-managed course in basic electricity and electronics were cluster-analyzed into groups, using 24 measures of cognitive characteristics. Discriminant analyses were…

Cognitive process instruction takes a constructivist view of education and emphasizes that students must be actively involved in learning, not merely recipients of information. Four basic descriptive model-building frameworks characterize the work related to cognitive process instruction: (1) a developmental framework, (2) a microanalytic…

Noting that metacognition plays a vital role in reading, this report summarizes research dealing with the development of metacognition in an especially important type of reading--reading to learn. The report is organized around four categories of metacognitive knowledge and control: (1) the text, (2) the task to be performed by the learner as…

Building on the accomplishments of the past, the schools of the future will be called upon to reach out in a range of new directions. (Editor)

Exercises are linguistically or content-oriented. There are three levels of silent reading: orienting, cursory and total. In designing exercises, emphasis should be placed on cursory reading. (Beginners have to concentrate on "total" reading.) Hints are given in acquiring skill in summarizing and excerpting. (Text is in German.) (IFS/WGA)

The appearance of English auxiliaries in the speech of five native speakers of Spanish is described, as well as these subjects' acquisition of the negative and interrogative transformations. (Author/RM)

An investigation of the relative effectiveness of the case-study and lecture methods. Results suggest that both methods are equally effective for producing knowledge and understanding of management topics but the case-study method is significantly more effective in teaching their application. (Author)