The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), also known as "The Nation's Report Card," is a congressionally mandated survey of educational achievement of American students in a variety of curriculum areas and of changes in that achievement across time. Part 1 of this report consists of the results of NAEP's 1990 national…

This practicum was designed to incorporate critical thinking skills instruction and practice into a fourth-grade curriculum to increase fourth-grade students' ability to recognize and apply critical thinking strategies to appropriate situations. This program concentrated on the increasing of six critical thinking skills: classification, sequence…

This publication contains revised versions of the major papers presented at a research conference on the learning and teaching of algebra. The papers and discussions focused on four major themes: what is algebra and what should it become, in light of continuing technological advances; what has research told us about the teaching and learning of…

This report presents results from a discovery study questionnaire, using forced choice and open-ended items, to assess the types of problems resident assistants (RAs) at the rural campus of Auburn University (Alabama) encounter, their level and sources of preparedness to deal with these problems, and the ways in which the residence life staff can…

Children rarely cite more than one strategy when asked to explain how they solved a particular arithmetic problem, hence their verbal explanations will not necessarily reveal whether they have considered multiple strategies on that problem. However, previous work has shown that, when asked to explain their performance on a task, children often use…

An attempt is made to synthesize the diverse perspectives on the teaching of thinking, especially in the area of social studies. A conception is developed that incorporates major theoretical orientations as well as the views of teachers. The conception emphasizes interpretation, analysis, and manipulation of information to solve problems that…

The purpose of the Commons Game is to teach students how social traps work; that is, that short-term individual gain tends to dominate long-term collective gain. Simulations of Commons Dilemma have grown considerably in the last decade; however, the research has used small face-to-face groups to study behavior in the Commons. To compare the…

The first (exploratory) phase of the Learning in Science Project focused on science teaching/learning in the Form 1 to 4 level (ages 10 to 14) and sought to identify problems and difficulties in several areas. Provided in this paper are comments obtained during structured/unstructured interviews (from students, ex-students, teachers, headmasters,…

This project was designed to: (1) assess 7th-graders' metacognitive beliefs and processes and investigate how they affect problem-solving behaviors; and (2) explore the extent to which these students can be taught to be more strategic and aware of their own problem-solving behaviors. The primary assessment was conducted by analyzing video tapes of…

One of a series of developmental projects that have produced and evaluated applications of an advanced multimedia, computer-based technology for basic skills education for Army enlisted personnel, this project focused on the development of an integrated curriculum to teach learning strategies and problem-solving skills. The first task was to…

This paper presents evidence to indicate that spontaneously generated analogies can play a significant role in the problem solving process of scientifically trained individuals. In addition, it is suggested that these individuals exhibit more than one method for generating analogies. Ten scientists (representing physics, mathematics, and computer…

In this study 34 spontaneous analogies produced by 16 college freshmen while solving qualitative physics problems are analyzed. A number of the analogies were invalid in the sense that they led to an incorrect answer from the physicist's point of view. However, many were valid, and a few were powerful in the sense that they seemed not only to help…

A training procedure was developed to improve (or to encourage) the construction of a meaningful problem representation by mentally retarded and learning disabled children. Children are taught to use an external visual representation for arithmetic word problems, in which the meaning of the problem is reflected. The construction of this visual…

When children are curious they are willing to investigate the less self-evident properties of matter. It is hoped as deeper explanations and relationships are explored, children learn analytic, critical, and creative skills for later application to phenomena encountered in life. A concern of elementary science teaching is motivating learning or…

This study investigated the effects of constraining freshmen physics students to follow an expert-like approach in analyzing mechanics problems. A computer-based, problem analysis environment was constructed that allowed novices to actively engage in performing a qualitative analysis of problems according to a hierarchy which combined declarative…