Most presentations of mathematical ideas are suggested as being backwards from the way they evolved. Two alternatives are discussed, both emphasizing mathematical processes. (MP)

Presents and reviews Piaget's recent work on equilibration. (BD)

Examines the appropriateness of Kohlberg's theory of moral development as a guide to educational practice. Suggests that the theory is open to a number of misinterpretations and misuses which must be borne in mind by those who wish to apply it in educational settings. (Author/RK)

The effect of set (to integrate or differentiate), characterization and conceptual structure on comprehension of a social situation was studied with a sample of 83 psychology students. Subjects judged groups, read stories and completed comprehension tests. Evidence provides support for the assumption that impressions affect one's comprehension of…

Investigated in two experiments involving 15- and 16-year-old mentally retarded students was knowledge of conceptual categories as reflected by semantic priming effects. (Author/IM)

Presents an analysis of technology education and its relevance to lateral thinking. Discusses prospects for utilizing technology education as a platform and a contextual domain for nurturing lateral thinking. Argues that technology education is an appropriate environment for developing complementary incorporation of vertical and lateral thinking.…

Drawing on the notion of the domain-specificity of recognition, reviews evidence on the effect of language in classification of and reasoning about categories from different domains. Looks at anthropological infant classification, and preschool categorization literature. Suggests the causal nature and indicative power of animal categories seem to…

Uses situated abstraction to understand nurses' conceptions of intensive quantity of drug concentration. Explores nurses' conceptions to undertake a pointed examination of the degree of situatedness of nurses' knowledge and reasoning. Demonstrates that nurses' conceptions were abstracted within their practice when they coordinated mathematical…

Examines the views of proof held by university-level mathematics students and teachers. Develops a framework for characterizing people's views of proof based on a distinction between public and private aspects of proof and the key ideas that link these two domains. (Author/KHR)

Analyzes from an historical perspective the extension of the natural-number domain to integers in students' transition from arithmetic to algebra in the context of word problems. Extracts four levels of acceptance of these numbers--subtrahend, relative number, isolated number and formal negative number--from historical texts. The first three…

Suggests a new framework for analyzing attitude and changes in attitude. Identifies four different evaluative processes as aspects of attitude: (1) emotions aroused in the situation; (2) emotions associated with the stimuli; (3) expected consequences; and (4) relating the situation to personal values. Illustrates the usefulness of this analytical…

Presents evidence that there exists much confusion regarding the connection between the algebraic and geometric aspects of slope, scale, and angle. Participants responded to a simple but non-standard task concerning the behavior of slope under a non-homogeneous change of scale. Analysis of the responses reveals two main approaches termed…

Investigates adults' long-term memory of mathematics learned in high school. Reports findings regarding the subjects' attempts to draw graphs of simple linear functions. Categorizes diverse responses to the task of drawing a graph of a linear function. Analyzes in detail three cases based on recall theories that explain the mechanism of recalling…

Three studies investigated the influence of principle-based inferences and unprincipled similarity relations on new category learning by three- to six-year-old children. Results indicated that categorization into newly learned categories may activate self-initiated, principle-based reasoning in young children, suggesting that spontaneous…

Describes one student's learning pathway as a sequence of several metastable conceptions of the atom starting from a planetary model. Displays the final cognitive element as an association of three parallel conceptions. Contains 26 references. (DDR)