The purpose of this research was to explore concepts about thinking that contribute to children's metacognitive experience during experimentation. Twenty-four randomly selected elementary school children in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, participated in five theory of mind tasks that assessed their: understanding of instantiation inference;…

Reported is a study to investigate the effects of a free-choice program on children's ability to interpret experiments, design simple investigations, and recognize variables that could affect the outcome of observed events. (Author/SA)

Many educators assert that the acquisition of thinking skills by students is of primary importance to science education today. This study was designed to examine the effect of an instructional approach on achievement in science process skills when compared to a more conventional method of science instruction. The DIAL(SPS)2, a directed approach to…

Tested the effectiveness of a program designed to teach children how to conduct and interpret a controlled experiment. Results indicate that the ability to control variables can be taught using the program (which consists of activities related to designing, building, and launching model rockets). (JN)

Developmental changes in the understanding and use of the logic of experimental control were addressed with three tasks in a longitudinal study. In all three tasks, understanding of experimental control was assessed by production measures (children were asked to test potential causal relations in a multivariable situation) and by choice/evaluation…

To cope with some social problems, Japanese educational planners are drafting some proposals for research into innovations in the educational system. This paper reports on some research recently done which looked into the relationships of the Japanese educational environment and the reasoning/thinking skills and process skills of students in…