Attempts to integrate Piaget's conceptualization of the development of social knowledge with the position of dialectical psychologists. (BD)

The patterns of use of computer-based communication technologies in knowledge synthesis are described by looking at the way groups use the technology for efforts that have at least some qualities of knowledge synthesis. A chart of basic options for communication through computers is provided, showing the generic class of systems, examples of…

Based on research studies from fields of education, social organization, and logic, this article argues that the study of organization of knowledge has important implications for students' general intellectual development. Recurring stages of intellectual development are outlined, and implications for improving quality of library school education…

Contrasts scholarship in technical communication with that in literary studies. (HOD)

The educational literature provides extensive evidence of concern with the issue of an integration of humanities and social sciences within higher education to meet the requirements of modern technology and society. This concern is also reflected in the numerous structural and functional changes in higher education, particularly in technical…

Argues for a reconceptualization of teaching expertise based on psychological similarities of expert teachers to one another. The authors offer a prototype-based categorization model, drawn from psychological research, on which the family resemblance among expert teachers may be founded. The authors discuss several implications of the prototype…

This field experiment begins to build a theoretical framework for exploring the effects of media characteristics on subjects' understanding and integration of information. Students in two eighth-grade science classes wrote term papers with one class using a print encyclopedia and the other an electronic encyclopedia to conduct their research. A…

The distribution of knowledge in society tends to parallel the distribution of other social and economic resources. Currently four major socioeconomic trends point not only to widened knowledge gaps in the future but also to greater divisions between higher and lower socioeconomic status (SES) groups. First, a long-term trend toward a more…

This book articulates and defends the "theory theory" of cognitive and semantic development: the idea that very young children just beginning to talk are engaged in profound restructurings of several domains of their knowledge. These restructurings are analogous to theory changes. The children's early semantic development is closely tied…

This paper argues that evaluation of advanced skills in teaching should be based on pedagogical content knowledge that good teachers should have but nonteachers in the discipline might not. Several schemes used in Victoria (Australia) for appraisal of advanced teaching skills are examined, and an alternative to competency-based approaches is…

This field study examined learning effects attributable to instructional design characteristics when eighth-grade science students used a print encyclopedia or a videotex version of the encyclopedia to write term papers. Results suggest that specific effects of instructional design characteristics of a delivery system are of a limited nature. (MBR)