Increased interest in teacher cognition has led to new ways of explorating teachers' thoughts and beliefs. The study described here combines elements of two previous studies to make comparisons among similes and simile categories and approaches to classroom teaching. The purpose of the study was to determine the relation between support for…

This paper attempts to create a vision of what it would be like to teach for understanding, to adopt the view of learner as constructor of his or her own understanding, and to share in the creation of an environment for reconstructing students' understanding and reasoning. Such a program is based on assumptions about the cognition of learners,…

Cognitive theory and research are relevant to vocational education. Three theoretical perspectives underlie cognitive theory-based curriculum and instruction: information processing, knowledge structure, and social history. A review of these perspectives in vocational curriculum and instruction suggests that instruction supporting higher-level…

Many preservice teachers confront their own lack of confidence and actual mathematics phobia for the first time in their math procedures classes. This study was designed to explore the application of a confluent education intervention, a model based on the premise that all learning is accompanied by an affective as well as a cognitive component,…

The substantial interest exhibited in the last decade in the identification of students' misconceptions of a wide range of scientific concepts has not extended to identification of students' misconceptions of the nature of science itself. This study examined the attitudes of 32 secondary school students, each from Canada, the United States, and…

This article suggests that it is important to examine how constructivism-in-practice can flourish or flounder according to a variety of influences, noting the importance of outlining the challenges teachers face in understanding and implementing constructivism in classrooms. The article characterizes four major challenges faced by teachers in…

This paper discusses the central thesis that new research on estimation and mental computation will benefit from more focused attention on the situations in which they are used. In the first section of the paper, a brief discussion of cognitive theory, with special attention to the emerging notion of situated cognition is presented. Three sources…

Moral education is becoming one of the most important topics in school systems today. Schools are fast learning that they must do something to try to teach students good values and even more to teach students how to reason about values. Research studies suggest that athletes are less morally reasoned and less sportsmanlike than their peer groups;…

A powerful way of understanding something new is by analogy with something already known. An analogy is defined as a mapping from one structure, which is already known (the base or source), to another structure that is to be inferred or discovered (the target). The research community has given considerable attention to analogical reasoning in the…

Two studies examining student images of the world as depicted on sketch maps are compared. The first study collected sketch maps of the world drawn by high school and university students in the United States, Canada, Finland, and Sierra Leone to examine the influence of location on student perceptions. The second study collected maps drawn by…

Sex differences on Perry's stages of epistemological development were investigated in a study of 100 freshmen (50 men and 50 women) at a large midwestern university. A semi-structured interview probed six domains related to Perry's theory, including the role of the learner, instructor, and peers in the learning situation, the question of…

As part of a broad effort to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of embedded training environments, research was conducted using a Naval Tactical Data System (NTDS) console emulator. Objectives were to: (1) develop methodological guidelines for specifying the instructional content of training exercises to be embedded in NTDS consoles; (2)…

One of the most common misconceptions about probability is the belief that successive outcomes of a random process are not independent. This belief has been dubbed the "gambler's fallacy". The belief that non-normative expectations such as the gambler's fallacy are widely held has inspired probability and statistics instruction that attempts to…

The major perspectives on problem solving of the twentieth century are reviewed--associationism, Gestalt psychology, and cognitive science. The results of the review on teaching problem solving and the uses of computers to teach problem solving are included. Four major issues related to the teaching of problem solving are discussed: (1)…

Education in America is facing a postindustrial crisis of legitimacy brought on by the cultural contradictions of advanced American capitalism. The theorist and social critic, D. Bell, describes the most significant feature of postindustrial society as "the disjunction of realms." This concept describes the progressive division of labor…