Reviews evidence against theories about preschool childrens' egocentricity and cognitive ineptness in the areas of classification, communication, number and order concepts, memory skills, and capacity for reasoning about causal relationships. Holds that preschoolers have been misunderstood because researchers tend to approach them with tasks…

New conceptions of learning, analogy, and capacity have fundamentally changed scientists' view of cognitive development. New conceptions of learning help to explain how representations of the world are acquired. New models of analogical reasoning have suggested that logical inferences are often made by mapping a problem into a mental model, or…

Expresses the opinion that education has overemphasized the written word and needs to move back to the oral tradition. Warns that Americans are trained to use the left brain whereas much of engineering needs right brain processing. Gives perspectives to improve engineering education. (MVL)