A pluralistic or eclectic use of educational theory is essential to curriculum deliberation in the sense that deliberation is enriched by the examination of problematic situations from a variety of perspectives. Skills, abilities, and sensitivities requisite to the practice of a critical pluralism are discussed. (RM)

Reports on consumers' use and perception of information sources. The focus is on the use of information when making a purchase decision; what sources consumers have used for a variety of products, what sources they might use, and how helpful they feel nonbiased sources in particular would be. (CT)

Constructs a tentative stage model of the development of the understanding of suicide motives, based on interview data from 14- to 22-year-old male and female subjects of different SES backgrounds. Development is characterized by these trends: extension of time perspective; differentiation and individualization of actor schemata and motive…

A student's understanding of the methodology of history and his acquisition of research objectivity are just as important as his understanding of the content. Provided is an activity to help secondary students evaluate historical information. (RM)

Findings of the comparison of spatial role taking, social role taking, and referential communication in 56 congenitally visually impaired and sighted children (seven to nine years old) revealed that visually impaired Ss need not differ from sighted Ss in cognitive social functioning if they have had significant verbal interaction with others.…

Administered standard and modified versions of the Defining Issues Test (DIT) to 40 older adults. Contrary to previous studies, the self/other manipulation failed to significantly influence older adults' moral judgments. The role of cognitive/perspective-taking and personal/affective factors in moral reasoning abilities are discussed. (JAC)

Piaget presents an account in which children's abilities to appreciate points of view are intimately related to their capacities for operational thought. To examine this hypothesis, children ages three to seven were given tasks requiring the coordination of visual-spatial perspectives and tests of operational thinking. Subjects exhibited potential…

Findings demonstrate that older people, just like any other segment of the population, have a wide variety of interests, not particularly determined by their age status. In fact, they have more freedom in selecting classes than do younger students because they take what is appealing. (Author)

A synthesis is presented of the work of Lindblom and Cohen, MacDonald and Walker, and the current authors. The synthesis considers issues in the usefulness of social science theory and research, and how observer roles in qualitative field studies yield multiple kinds of usable knowledge to a variety of audiences. (Author/BW)

The results showed that LD children were much less able to adopt an alternative viewpoint than their normal counterparts. Moreover, within the group of LD children, females were substantially more egocentric than males. (Author/SBH)

The sociometric testing indicated that the LD children were less popular than their normal peers, but no less insightful about how others regarded them. No relationship between decentering ability and popularity was found. (Author)

Patterns writing instruction after the contemporary quest for weight control: lots of exercises, dedication toward achieving a goal, and developing slowly through carefully planned stages of the whole process. (RL)

Ninety-six first- through fourth-grade children were administered four cognitive perspective-taking tasks in order to assess their ability to coordinate simultaneously their own viewpoint and another person's differing cognitive viewpoint. (CM)

A regression equation indicated that five variables predicted 36 percent of the variance of the role taking scores. These predictor variables were the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC) Vocabulary score, Matching Familiar Figures errors, sex, neighborhood, and lateral dominance. (Author/DLS)