This book is the result of the accumulated research of five researchers from the United States and Australia on a school in Coastal Australia. The research team shared a constructivist epistemology and interpreted the qualitative and quantitative data collected over a 10-week period in two classrooms from that perspective. Each chapter discusses…

Reviews a monograph which addresses children's higher-order thinking skills. Suggests the following for teaching problem solving: identify and develop content-independent and content-dependent problem-solving skills, connect developed skills through workshop-style activities to subject discipline, and help students identify and reconstruct their…

Videotaped interviews of 29 Australian students from grades 1-3 were analyzed to assess and compare the processing loads of mathematical representations and strategies used by teachers and children to learn the concept of place value. Results indicated that some representations and strategies impose an unnecessary processing load that can…

Stresses the importance of metacognitive skills (knowledge of one's own cognitive processes) in mathematical performance. Discusses the differences between metacognitive thinking and metacognitive experiences and the ways they each influence performance. Describes how accurate metacognition improves students' mathematical performance, and outlines…

Reports on a study of 323 Nigerian secondary students to determine what relationship exists between preferred and actual classroom environments and their approaches to learning science. Finds that Nigerian students prefer more teacher control, a less competitive atmosphere, and less emphasis on student friendships. (CFR)

This paper reviews recent findings in the field of neuroscience that may have a direct impact on specific methodologies and practices in education. It focuses on five concepts from neuroscience: (1) the mind-brain processes symbolic information; (2) neurons are imbued with an epistemic hunger and the mind-brain with a cognitive imperative to learn…

A practicum project emphasizing critical thinking skills was undertaken in an eighth grade history class to make students aware of the nature and seriousness of plagiarism. The 10-week unit was preceded by a reading comprehension test and an essay assignment on a major Civil War battle. Plagiarized portions of the essays were highlighted and the…

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…

Students of reasoning have long tried to understand how people revise systems of beliefs. This paper maintains that people often change their beliefs in ways driven by considerations of explanatory coherence. In this report, a computational model is described of how experimental subjects revise their naive beliefs about physical motion. First,…

Advances in cognitive science have greatly increased our knowledge of how the human mind stores and uses information. That knowledge can be used to decompose curricular objectives so as to increase the specificity of instruction to a level of precision that should greatly enhance student writing. This article identifies some major types of…

Reports on an exploratory study of a metacognitive approach to teaching low achieving secondary students. Asserts that the research team hoped to examine a process whereby a dialog about learning processes would develop. Finds that all students indicated that they were able to focus on learning as a topic of conversation. (CFR)

Presents a concise introduction and overview of "constructivism." Constructivists assert that knowledge is constructed by individuals; constructivists advocate classroom procedures that encourage students to identify the subjectivity and biases of existing interpretations and to arrive at their own conclusions. Examines four hypothetical teacher…

Considers some of the complexities of text, ownership, memorization, and plagiarism. The article suggests that plagiarism needs to be understood in terms of complex relationships between text, memory, and learning as part of an undertaking to explore different relationships between learning, literacy, and cultural difference. (49 references)…

Presents the results of an experiment that evaluated the efficiency of analogy in the conceptual restructuring of a science topic. The experiment involved a fifth-grade class studying water and heat flow. Discovered that analogy can act as an effective trigger for restructuring knowledge. (MJP)

This paper begins with a summary and analysis of Robert Glaser's arguments, presented in his paper "Education and Thinking: The Role of Knowledge," which contend there are strong interactions between structures of knowledge and cognitive processes, and that problem solving and reasoning are taught best in the context of the acquisition…