Students and instructors may be frustrated with students' lack of understanding of sociological concepts. We suggest that the difficulty of teaching and learning sociology is that sociological concepts and relationships require the use of abstract reasoning patterns. Many students are unaccustomed to using these abstract reasoning patterns. We use…

A pilot study investigated the conceptual level of hearing-impaired preservice teachers as they experienced practicum work with hearing pupils. Eight hearing-impaired student teachers from the Gallaudet College undergraduate teacher education program were videotaped on two different occasions as they taught hearing pupils in public schools during…

The effect of verbal contextual information on junior high school students' categorization of differences among photographic art was examined. Photographs of varying levels of abstraction were presented to the viewers both with and without correct and erroneous titles that referred to descriptive or interpretive information. Twelve students…

A survey of undergraduate education methods texts indicates that students are repeatedly exposed to the theories of Jean Piaget, with an emphasis on the stages of development and characteristics of preschool children. The suggestion is made that an evaluation should be undertaken of misconceptions that undergraduate students might develop as a…

This study compared the performance of 51 gifted Caucasian children on the Stanford Binet LM and the Stanford Binet Fourth Edition (SB4) to determine whether significantly different scores would be obtained. The 33 male and 18 female subjects were from middle and upper-middle class families in a western urban area. Their developmental histories,…

The first chapter of this publication, which focuses on a new definition and integration of thinking skills in the curriculum, presents a model that unifies current research and theory with a new understanding of the traditional notion of content and with a different approach to instruction. The model proposed in this chapter synthesizes recent…

An inservice model was developed to assist teachers in asking students the kinds of questions that facilitate higher order thinking. Higher order thinking involves problem identification and definition, hypothesizing, collecting, analyzing and synthesizing data, and formulating conclusions that upon application will prove valid. Based on this…

In relating brain hemisphere differences to education and educational administration, the author reviews literature on the issue and discusses the concepts involved. For background, he briefly goes over the history of brain and cognition studies and the advent of "split-brain" studies and the "triune" brain theory. Definitions…

Students (N=22) enrolled in secondary school biology were evaluated for their abilities to use: combinatorial logic; correlational reasoning; separation and control of variables; exclusion of irrelevant variables; proportional reasoning; and probabilistic reasoning. Each student responded individually to six Piagetian tasks designed to measure…

A study of the development of abstract noun definitions in children and adolescents had as its subjects 120 students evenly divided into age groups of 10-, 14-, and 18-year-olds, randomly selected from students scoring in the 40th to 88th percentiles on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills (for 10-year-olds) and the Tests of Achievement and Proficiency…

Children, aged 4-8 were given 2-term relational problems to test the hypothesis that only older children can process sentences as propositions and realize their logical implications. Results indicated even the youngest children could perform the task. (ST)

The relationship of particular learning styles and plausible reasoning ability of 110 subjects from 6th, 7th, and 8th grade was examined. Data were compiled on a plausible reasoning test and on a Learning Style Inventory with four subscales: (1) Concrete Experience (CE), (2) Reflective Observation (RO), (3) Abstract Conceptualization (AC), and (4)…

One of the most typical ways in which people learn is by inferring general rules from examples. In recent years, significant progress has been made toward understanding how learning from examples can occur, determining when it does occur, and identifying conditions that promote it. This paper reviews these results and then suggests a program of…

The philosophical roots of the concept of lifelong learning are considered in relation to the views of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. They pioneered in their analyses of intellectual development and in the importance of the use of the mind throughout the life span. Plato and Aristotle added metaphysical arguments to support their systems of…

It is hypothesized that certain mental structures are related to certain teaching skills. These structures are identified as combinatorial logic, essential to planning lessons, and hypothetical reasoning, an important aid in analyzing lessons. These formal thinking abilities should result in greater improvement during practice and later teaching.…