Teaching conceptions in higher education, or so-called academics' conceptions of teaching (ACTs), are essential in informing teaching behaviors and influencing students' learning. Consequently, several attempts have been made since the 1990s to understand what ACTs represent and how they can be developed towards student-centered teaching. However,…

As part of ongoing research on student thinking about quantum mechanical concepts and formalism, we explored how students defined and made sense of expectation values. Previous research has focused on student difficulties when defining the expectation value for a generic operator and found that students conflate other quantum mechanical ideas with…

One of the main limitations of natural language-based approaches to meaning is that they do not incorporate multimodal representations the way humans do. In this study, we evaluate how well different kinds of models account for people's representations of both concrete and abstract concepts. The models we compare include unimodal distributional…

Recent studies show that a new strategy called differential-associative processing is effective for learning related concepts; however, our knowledge about differential-associative processing is still limited. Therefore the goals of the present study are to assess the duration of knowledge that is acquired from using differential-associative…

In this article I report on a study of the cognitive tools that research mathematicians employ when developing deep understandings of abstract mathematical definitions. I arrived at several conclusions about this process: Examples play a predominant role in understanding definitions. Equivalent reformulations of definitions enrich understanding.…

Article explores some of the key notions of the construct "concept" from the psychological and educational literature in order to demonstrate the need for standardization of definition and a more unified front in future investigations involving this important element in the study of cognition. (Author)

Author brought out some of the more important ambiguities in the word "consider" and related them to teaching and learning. He did so with the intention of assessing the views of those who urge the schools to consider issues they have often avoided. (Author/RK)

Critically analyzes a definition of creativity and concludes that the concept of creativity is illusive and undefinable. (JR)

Article considered the source, nature, and role of values in human behavior. (Author/RK)

General theories and process models of behavior are analyzed relative to vessels creative functioning, creativity is defined, and theoretical concepts for six phases of the creative process are presented. (MC)

This article developed out of a belief that our great hope of building a peaceful, brilliant world civilization, based upon the best that all the great cultures can offer, lies in the vast potentiality of creative ideas expressed in terms of a sane international policy under the leadership of the world's statesmen. (Author)

An examination of current definitions of creativity, the characteristics of creative individuals, and an overview of J. Piaget's theory of development are presented. (PHR)

Schemata, as defined recently by reading researchers, represent generic concepts which are stored in memory. They include underlying objects, situations, events, actions, and sequences of actions for use in interpreting new experiences. Research on schemata suggests that teachers need to pay attention to the types of questions they ask when…

Although critical thinking is a pervasive educational objective, it remains inconsistently and imperfectly defined. The present paper attempts to sort out direct attempts at defining critical thinking. Such definitions are classified as representing one of three differing points of view: critical thinking as evaluation, critical thinking as…

The moral concepts entailed in Kohlberg's cognitive-developmental theory of moral judgment are examined and the underlying meta-ethical position is criticized. (Editor)