This article describes a detailed analysis of knowledge building in a problem-based learning group. Knowledge building involves increasing the collective knowledge of a group through social discourse. For knowledge building to occur in the classroom, the teacher needs to create opportunities for constructive discourse in order to support student…

A sixth-grade class investigated the ecologies of two local retention ponds over the course of one school year. In this context, instruction assisted development as students designed models of the pond in one-gallon jars and attempted to stabilize these jars in sustainable ecosystems that could be used to study questions about the ponds.…

Objective: To use experience sampling method (ESM) to examine the impact of inattentive and hyperactive-impulsive ADHD symptoms on emotional well-being, activities and distress, cognitive impairment, and social functioning assessed in the daily lives of young adults. The impact of subjective appraisals on their experiences is also examined.…

Head Start is a federally funded preschool program for poor children designed to help close the gap between those children and their more advantaged peers before they begin public schooling. Given that Head Start appears to have positive long-run impacts on its recipients, a natural and important next question to ask is: What are the channels…

The foundations of brain architecture are established early in life through a continuous series of dynamic interactions in which environmental conditions and personal experiences have a significant impact on how genetic predispositions are expressed. Because specific experiences affect specific brain circuits during specific developmental…

The present paper underscores the importance of the cognitive orientation of EFL students in their success in writing courses. A few suggestions are made as to how EFL teachers can put their students on the right cognitive path in their writings.

Understanding how various aspects of mathematics education work together is necessary if reform efforts are to succeed, Ms. Newton argues. She compares U.S. and Chinese mathematics education to provide perspectives that might further such understanding. She highlights the Chinese emphasis on thinking systematically about teaching, curriculum, and…

Bilinguals must have a mechanism for controlling attention to their two language systems in order to achieve fluent performance in each language without intrusions from the other. This paper examines the evidence that the experience of controlling attention to two languages boosts the development of executive control processes in childhood for…

Comprehension of moral reasoning is important both for successful moral education and for Kohlbergian claims that moral reasoning development is cognitive in nature. Because a psychometrically appropriate moral comprehension instrument does not appear to exist, the Moral Comprehension Questionnaire (MCQ) was constructed in Study 1 and displayed…

This article explores the thinking behind students' thinking. (Contains 2 endnotes.)

The CAME project was inaugurated in 1993 as an intervention delivered in the context of mathematics with the intention of accelerating the cognitive development of students in the first two years of secondary education. This paper reports substantial post-test and long-term National examination effects of the intervention, yet, by discussing the…

Concept maps are an instructional strategy that promotes meaningful learning. This chapter examines the use of concept maps in online environments through discussion of CmapTools software. (Contains 1 table and 1 figure.)

Episodic memory depends upon multiple dissociable retrieval processes. Here we investigated the degree to which the processes engaged during successful retrieval are dependent on the properties of the representations that underlie memory for an event. Specifically we examined whether the individual elements of an event can, under some conditions,…

The author reviews research indicating that discipline specialists and novices acquire knowledge differently. He argues that teaching professionals need to help students learn how to learn within general knowledge domains. The developmental/sociocultural perspectives of Vygotsky, Bakhtin, Luria, and others, which emphasize the inter/intrapersonal,…

A major problem for developmental science is understanding how the cognitive and emotional networks important in carrying out mental processes can be related to individual differences. The last five years have seen major advances in establishing links between alleles of specific genes and the neural networks underlying aspects of attention. These…