Considers the unique cognitive and intellectual factors that influence the learning and education of older adults. Reviews research on patterns of intellectual and cognitive aging and the implications of patterns in attention, memory, information retrieval, and tolerance for interference in the development of cognitive training programs for older…

Interviews with skilled mine workers in Queensland, Australia, suggest that informal learning in the workplace enables authentic activities, access to experts, and sociocultural environment conductive to the development of expertise. Skilled work means technical competence in a context of sociocultural values. (SK)

Two experiments examined role of affective correspondence between signal and outcome in 4-month olds' associative learning. Found that only when consoling infant-directed speech signaled the sad face did infants' visual interest in a checkerboard increase. Arousing infant-directed speech signaling either the smiling or sad face produced positive…

This paper answers several frequently asked questions about constructivism, including how to define it, how to plan the curriculum, how to assess student understanding, what to do with the information, where to begin, how students work in a constructivist classroom, and why constructivism is important. (SM)

Analyzed a corpus of videotapes in which university students solved physics problems to determine how students learn to understand a physics equation. Found that students learn to understand physics equations in terms of a vocabulary of elements called symbolic forms, each associating a simple conceptual schema with a pattern of symbols. Findings…

Tests the hypothesis that an early adolescent brain growth plateau and spurt exists, and that this plateau and spurt influence students' ability to reason scientifically and to learn theoretical science concepts. Finds that measures of students' (n=210) prefrontal lobe activity correlated highly with scientific reasoning ability, and that these…

Calm or crying 9- and 12-week-olds sat facing a researcher who gazed into their eyes or at their forehead and delivered either a sucrose solution or pacifier or delivered nothing. Found that combining sweet taste and eye contact was necessary and sufficient for calm 9- and 12-week-olds to form a preference for the researcher, but not for crying…

Community college leaders face new and diverse challenges, often requiring different orientations to leadership than were effective previously. Yet, focusing on leadership as a series of career stages through which particular skills and techniques are learned often leaves leaders without the capacity to do the adaptive work required of their…

Brain is the source of all human thoughts, feelings and emotions. Now the mysteries of the human brain are rapidly being elucidated by neuroscience research. For more than 150 years, neuroscience has held that most of the brain's functionality develops during critical periods in early childhood and that once past these critical periods, the window…

R.S. Peters coined the term "paradox of moral education". In this article, the author identifies two subordinate paradoxes: how habituated reason is psychologically possible and how heteronomously formed autonomy is morally/politically possible and justifiable. He sketches possible Aristotelian solutions of those paradoxes and argues that for…

Neural networks are applied to a theoretical subject in developmental psychology: modeling developmental transitions. Two issues that are involved will be discussed: discontinuities and acquiring qualitatively new knowledge. We will argue that by the appearance of a bifurcation, a neural network can show discontinuities and may acquire…

Children's accounts of their participation in sociocultural activity related to number are essential for their teachers in order that they can assist children in building their formal learning in number on informally acquired numerical understandings. Children's participation in sociocultural activity related to number will differ from child to…

The article examines learning and identity formation for young people in an Australian surf club. Drawing on Lave and Wenger's notion of situated learning, it identifies how membership in the surf club from an early age involves highly significant and meaningful learning and identity formation, where learning is co-constructed with other members…

We investigated the developmental trajectory of nonadjacent dependency learning in an artificial language. Infants were exposed to 1 of 2 artificial languages with utterances of the form [aXc or bXd] (Grammar 1) or [aXd or bXc] (Grammar 2). In both languages, the grammaticality of an utterance depended on the relation between the 1st and 3rd…

Data-logging exercises in science classrooms assume that with the proper scaffolding and provision of contexts by instructors, pupils are able to meaningfully comprehend the experimental variables under investigation. From a case study of knowing and learning in a fish hatchery using real-time computer statistical software, we show that…