John Dewey believed that all genuine learning comes about through experience. This introduction to Dewey's work explains Dewey's theories regarding knowledge and intellectual development, the acquisition of a body of facts versus learning scientific ways of treating experience, and the significance of Dewey's theories on informal learning centers…

Over the past 30 years, research on how college impacts student development has continually pointed to the peer group as perhaps the dominant change agent during the college years. A college student's peers act as a reference group, or an environmental source of sociocultural norms in the midst of which a student grows and develops (Clark & Trow,…

Universities face enormous problems. Their survival depends on how they respond to persistent budgetary cuts from public sources, conflicting expectations from varying constituencies, and competitive pressures from competing training organizations. As they search for institutional arrangements that will be conducive to their success in the face of…

This essay draws on insights from studies on learning to explore the role of formation in the classroom. Studies of intellectual development, learning styles, and the physiology of learning are reviewed. Methodologies and models for encouraging formative learning in seminary classrooms are explored. This essay was written to address one of the…

While educators in gifted education and general education appear to share many goals, there are inadequacies in the implementation of complex educational practices that meet the needs of gifted students in general education classrooms and the goals of educational reform. This paper presents a theoretical framework, Teaching for Intellectual and …

In this paper we examine the effect an outdoor and experiential education program on the life effectiveness skills of its participants. A private boys school in Melbourne focused on the challenging time of year nine to implement a program they hoped would enable the boys to develop life effectiveness skills in the areas of time management, social…

Forty-three adolescents (11-16 years of age) attending a health care program, Project Alternatives, for "street children" in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, drew randomly assigned pictures of either the ideal man or woman, engaged in some activity. These drawings were compared to samples from adolescents in various parts of the world to assess…

This paper demonstrates a method for constructing long variables using items that elicit partically correct responses across ages. Long variables may be defined by students at different ages (year levels) attempting common items within a test containing other items considered to be appropriate for each age or year level. A developmental model of…

This study of high school students argues that American high school classes continue to be unsuccessful and boring to students because they artificially separate intellectual achievement and social development of adolescents. To understand how students view their high school priorities and the role of their experiences in the transition from…

This study examined the intellectual development of black college students and investigated the relationship among students' intellectual development, their academic and social integration, and the noncognitive factors specified by Tracey and Sedlacek (1984). Subjects were 344 black undergraduate students at a large midwestern state university who…

By assigning negative value to egocentric language, Jean Piaget equates depersonalized thought and logic with maturity, and gives disproportionate favor to socialized language. By focusing on the deterministic ends to be gained through the acquisition of socialized language, Piaget misses the value of egocentric language. Maurice Merleau-Ponty,…

In the context of increasing criticism of bilingual education and the use of native language instruction, it must be remembered that they are based on a sound rationale. First, they address the need for continued learning as the child moves from one language to the other. Second, they address the need to diminish the alienation which children feel…

This article, written for psychologists, educators, and allied health professionals, is both a review of the "Handbook of Human Intelligence" Robert S. Sternberg, editor, and an essay in response to it. Following a note on the contributions made to the field of cognitive psychology by Sternberg and the Handbook, chapters of the book,…

Suggestions are given relating to having plants and animals in the classroom to stimulate development of the understanding of the concept of being alive, a concept not really understood by children under age nine. The research reviewed promotes firsthand experiences to help form concepts of living and nonliving, of identity and causality. (EB)

Investigated preschool children's understanding of temporal relationships in terms of their comprehension of sentences containing clauses linked by "before" and "after". Also evaluated was the relative importance of order of mention and main-subordinate relations strategies in children's interpretation of temporal order information. (Author/SDH)