In this study Dutch subjects with four different levels of expertise (24 second-year, 24 fourth-year, 24 sixth-year medical students, and 24 internists with at least 4 years of experience) studied, diagnosed, and explained four clinical cases. Diagnostic accuracy increased with the increasing level of expertise. The number of concepts used and the…

External representations have a great impact on what and how students learn. One key manner in which environments can operate upon novices' knowledge is through helping them ground their problem solving in an understanding of the situation embodied by the problem. In this paper, students' difficulties in microeconomics problem solving were…

Research summarized here demonstrates how similarity thinking can be used in training programs to help ethnic minority children acquire basic skills. Current achievements are often attenuated by poor language skills, especially when English is not the first language of the child. Similarity thinking assesses the child's ability to learn without…

This study investigated the role of knowledge base organization in elementary school students' memory performance. In a preliminary study, students in grades 2, 6, and 10 rated words from three semantic categories for their category representativeness. Results disclosed age-related changes in how children rate words for high and low typicality.…

This study explored preservice teachers' (n = 25) knowledge structures and their mastery of content knowledge in relation to their ability to diagnose the strengths and weaknesses of a fourth grader's videotaped explanations of a scientific phenomenon, i.e., molecular kinetic properties of air. Participants' knowledge structures were analyzed…

This research applied evolving conceptions of learning to examine how to represent and evaluate students' and experts' cognitive structures. High school history students completed several tasks. Direct comparisons of the quality of student maps with expert maps showed that experts' concept maps could be used to score students' concept maps…

This paper describes a study of the connections between beliefs about mathematics, autonomy, and knowledge structures in mathematics. Assumptions underlying the study were (1) that students' beliefs and knowledge are constructs of the individual and play a dynamic role in the learning and doing of mathematics; and (2) that autonomy theoretically…

The purpose of this study was to examine the nature and degree of differences in expert versus novice knowledge structures, both before and after training, when judging the similarity of multiple-choice test items within a statistics and test theory (STT) domain. Subjects were employees of the Testing Division of the New York State Department of…

Trends in emphases in the study of clinical reasoning are examined, with attention to three major branches of research: problem-solving, knowledge engineering, and propositional analysis. There has been a general progression from a focus on the generic form of clinical reasoning to an emphasis on medical content that supports the reasoning…

Noting that conceptions of the cognitive representations and processes involved in discourse comprehension and production recently have undergone an important shift in orientation, this paper points out the importance of the shift to the conception of the nature of texts, of text understanding, and of cognitive processes in knowledge creation and…

Discusses Vee mapping, a technique to assist students in categorizing the relationship between the conceptual and procedural aspects of science. Presents a study to investigate elementary education majors' (n=27) use of the Vee heuristic and concept mapping for the construction of knowledge; attitudes toward learning science in collaborative…

Diagnoses of students' performance on procedural mathematical tasks need to display a certain level of stability and robustness if they are to be used as the basis for remediation, particularly with computer-delivered instruction. The purpose of this study was to compare two diagnostic approaches for describing students' (n=231) errors in algebra…

An overview is presented of the epistemology of the three types of constructivism. Criticized is another interpretation of constructivism; it is stated that this interpretation is trivial, cognitively abridged, and disrespectful of students' capacities, creativity, and imagination. Constructivism has to go beyond saying that knowledge is…

This longitudinal investigation assessed the development and changes in preservice science teachers' conceptions of subject matter and pedagogy as they proceeded through their secondary science methods course, practicum, microteaching, and student teaching. Twelve preservice science teachers were asked, on four occasions each several weeks apart,…

One hundred and forty students in grades 6 and 7 were asked to process 32 science statements. Half of the statements were consistent with their prior knowledge, whereas the remaining facts were inconsistent with it. Half of the students were instructed to read the sentences for understanding (reading controls). The remaining students were…