The interpersonal communication course at an Ohio college is based on several assumptions about the nature of interpersonal communication. First, the course should emphasize both the ability to demonstrate knowledge of the communicative behavior appropriate in a given situation (cognitive domain) and the performance necessary for communication…

W. M. Gray's "How is Your Logic?" a Piagetian-based, group-administered written test of cognitive development, and B. Leadbeater's Livian Wars Task, a formal operations-based, written, social-cognition problem were given to 348 college undergraduate and graduate students to investigate the impact of chronological age and amount of formal…

Because they have difficulty in processing textual material, learning disabled, limited English speaking students, and reading deficient students create special problems for all teachers. Content area teachers can help these students by using a simple three-step strategy. The first phase, labeled TALK, involves prereading, with the readers…

This study investigated: (1) whether boys and girls master formal reasoning tasks to the same degree at the same age; (2) if the variance of boys' and girls' performance in formal tasks could be predicted by the same cognitive learning abilities; and (3) what are the main and interactional effects of age, sex, and school type on the variance of…

Groups of children at three different developmental levels were each given a brief presentation by their classroom teachers regarding the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, one day after the shuttle exploded. The standardized presentation included information about where the shuttle was launched, the crew, the special significance of Mrs.…

The focus of this research was the conduct and analysis of six hours of clinical interviews with sixth and ninth grade students to investigate how they learn geometry in light of the van Hiele model. In chapter 1 an overview of the project and its four major goals is given. The theoretical model is described in chapter 2. In chapter 3 the…

This presentation uses the premise that educational practice currently derives little benefit from the mass of ongoing research as a starting point for a reassessment of the values and goals of research. Particular emphasis is placed on the relation between research and educational practices involving 4-year-olds. The first part of the discussion…

This argument for process analysis in moral education focuses primarily on social developmental processes and educational processes that influence the development of moral reasoning structures. The descriptive-developmental approach, the developmental-ethical approach, and the developmental-process approach to moral discourse are briefly…

The routinization and ritualization of school reflects, in part, an emphasis on acquisition of knowledge and technical mastery of skills rather than understanding and the ability to apply information to new situations. A societal environment needs to be created that promotes learning as more than an aggregation of facts and answers to test…

Four commonly used approaches to teaching English as a second language to limited English proficiency and non-English proficiency students have both advantages and disadvantages. The Natural Approach is based on children's acquisition of speech sounds and oral proficiency through spontaneous interaction in a natural environment. Although a natural…

The development of economic reasoning in young children is examined from the theoretical perspective of Piaget's work on cognitive development. To determine a possible correlation between grade level and the type of reasoning children use to approach economic problems, 70 urban children, preschool through grade 3, answered questions which measured…

This study tested the effectiveness of having fifth-grade students generate their own examples of selected concepts on energy. Hypotheses were that subjects would perform better on sections of a test related to definitions and recognition of exemplars of the concepts for which they found their own examples than on sections related to comparible…

This study develops and employs the construct, personal orientation to science learning, to study the processes by which children construct meaning as they learn science in school. The theoretical bases of the thesis are the commitments of a constructivist view of learning and the psychological framework of George Kelly's Personal Construct…

A report is given of a 3-year longitudinal study which has two strands, both of which are concerned with understanding better the complexities of teaching and learning science, knowing more of the processes by which individuals change, and understanding more of the research methodologies appropriate for these purposes. The first strand involves…

Misconceptions are systematic, intelligently conceived, and quite reasonable theories that have been constructed on the basis of experience. Research studies on misconceptions have indicated that students develop intelligently conceived and sophisticated concepts of science. Although some of these are compatible with the principles of modern…