A dialectical schemata framework was used to interpret, code, and compare 27 interviews on the nature of education with freshmen, seniors and faculty members at a small, highly selective liberal arts college in order to provide a description of the organization of dialectical thinking and its presence in mature thought. (Author/DB)

The Ethical Reasoning Inventory (ERI) is an objective test derived from Kohlberg's Moral Judgment Interview. It correlated higher with Kohlberg , and has higher internal consistency than the Defining Issues Test and the Moral Judgment Scale. (CP)

Reported is a study involving six group administered tasks concerning proportional, probablistic, and correlational reasoning with 505 students aged 11.5 to 20.0 years. Investigated were the effectiveness of the tasks for assessing formal reasoning; categories of classification for students' responses and implications for teaching are suggested by…

Concepts that are directly related to teaching are learned as such by education majors and play an integral part in students' development into teachers. Further research using other student populations or in other areas of teacher education is needed. (Author/CJ)

Piaget's formal operational stage is related to the teaching of science by focusing on the development of paper and pencil tests for determining students' cognitive level of development and on procedures for helping concrete operational students improve achievement and become more formal in their thinking. (JMF)

Seventy fifth and sixth grade students were randomly assigned to one of two instructional groups. Instruction for both groups was implemented within similar high-level questioning environments. However, in one group the teacher elicited more high-level student responses per question posed than was the case in the second group. (Author)

Reports that complex abstractions may be easily acquired by persons of less than 75 IQ if the method of presentation of the abstractions ensures maximum visibility of relevant details. (FL)

Children in two studies were shown a sequence of pictorial paired associates for study. They were subsequently tested for their recognition memory of these items plus an additional four new items that could be recognized if the child engaged in a reasoning-by-exclusion strategy. (JMB)

To broaden and develop reasoning powers in students the teacher should encourage observation, critical questioning of hypotheses, evaluation of conclusions and how they are reached, and propose new avenues of approach to problems. (JD)

The author: (1) pinpoints the central core of values in education (i.e. normative reasoning); (2) outlines the special opportunities counselors have for engaging in values education; (3) points to inadequacies in several popular theories; and (4) describes a new program at the University of British Columbia in values education. (Author)

This article offers specific strategies to diagnose and remediate difficulties students may have in learning multiplication facts. Analyzes strategies students use to go from a known fact to an unknown fact. The point is made that, for many students, the order of interpretation of a number fact may affect accuracy. (DB)

Panoramic scanning is the capacity to perceive, interpret, and appreciate complex problems from a big-picture vantage point. Barriers to panoramic scanning (sensory bombardment, superficial polarized thought, and tunnel vision) and facilitators (broad interests and knowledge, pattern finding, and connection-making skills) are identified. Educators…

This study examined the relationship between adaptive functioning and intellectual functioning in 18 children with autism and mental retardation and 20 children with mental retardation. The children with autism showed significantly more impairment in adaptive behavior composite scores, verbal reasoning abilities, socialization skills, and…

Examined children's ability to settle causal relations and their capacity to make conclusions based on certain experiences and representations. Found that preschool children have a solid explanatory basis for their everyday life, within which facts are not generally accepted but are interpreted through a certain "logic," and the motives…

A study involving 31 adults with Down syndrome investigated their ability to reason. Results found they did not differ from typically developing children, matched on expressive and verbal ability, in transitivity and non-verbal analogical thinking; however, they did differ in categorical reasoning, classical verbal analogies, and short-term…