The Staff Development Team of the Columbus City Schools (Nebraska), composed of three teachers and three administrators, emphasizes the need for long-range planning in its design of an inservice model for the school district. Emphasis was placed on identifying and addressing the unique needs of teachers within the school district. The model also…

This study examined how readily teachers learn the components of the troubleshooting model of Tillman (1982) via a guided design approach, the consistency of the language of the model with the language of teachers, and the concerns teachers express about guided design as an instructional innovation. Forty-five teachers enrolled in a graduate level…

This publication provides curriculum developers with a model of a pretechnical curriculum with special emphasis on human factors at the workplace. Section 1 describes this model, the focus of which is self-empowerment, which in turn is related to an individual's mastery of three categories of interrelated skills and knowledge: generalizable,…

Complex decision-making environments often demand that a range of alternative strategies be identified and compared for their shared value in achieving desired ends. Simple parametric statistical procedures such as analysis of variance and discriminant function analysis can be used in such situations to compare (using selected criteria) the value…

A bargaining process, begun over 10 years ago, is based on problem-solving rather than on adversarial confrontation and uses elements of participative management. It has resulted in outstanding benefits for two school districts. Called "Theory Z bargaining," the process follows a procedure based on each side treating the other with…

The characteristics of clinical problem solving tasks are discussed and applied to reading diagnosis and remediation. These characteristics are: (1) clinical practice is concerned with action directed toward a particular problem or set of problems, (2) clinicians are generally concerned with the problems of a particular individual, (3) clinical…

A prescriptive model of problem-solving performance is described. The aim of the model is to specify explicitly how problems should be described initially in such a form as to facilitate their subsequent solution. According to the model, the process of initial problem description can be decomposed into two successive stages. The first uses general…

This study examined a proposed procedure for constructing theoretical descriptions of mechanics problems, in particular, to determine if the procedure led to explicit and correct descriptions of the motion and interaction of systems and if the resulting theoretical descriptions facilitated generation of correct constraint equations and, hence,…

To explore the utility of decision seminars as instructional tools in educational administration training, researchers observed two one-quarter graduate courses in educational administration at Ohio State University. In the courses--one with 13 students, the other with 18--the decision seminar was used as an instructional framework within which…

This planning guide, written for those developing new education programs and those attempting to improve existing educational services, uses a family planning education program to illustrate the planning process in a practical, step-by-step approach. Each of the five chapters - How to Plan and Evaluate Your Program, Client Education, Community…

This paper introduces an artistic model of planning and problem solving. The model is based on a case study of processes engaged in by a college art student during the course of producing a senior thesis in batik (a wax-resist fabric dyeing process). Based on the premise that knowledge of the creative process is essential to understanding the…

The relationship of aptitude, strategy, and cognitive task performance is explored through the use of mathematical models of performance time. Models of strategy and strategy-shifting on a spatial visualization task were tested individually for 30 male high school and college subjects. For each of three successive task steps (encoding,…

This study undertook to develop an improved conceptual system for explaining effective behavior; to build reliable measures of the components of that behavior; to develop and apply the measures internationally; and to validate the measures and concepts against objective criteria of achievement. An eight-nation team defined three sets of components…

This study explores the potential effectiveness of a new procedure for identifying and studying certain of the cognitive processes used during problem solving. The procedure is used in an attempt to categorize the types of conceptual thinking problem solvers employ, to study trial-and-error behavior, and to investigate problem solvers' abilities…

IF COMPUTER PROGRAMS ARE TO SERVE AS USEFUL MODELS OF COGNITIVE BEHAVIOR, THEIR CREATORS MUST FACE THE NEED TO ESTABLISH AN INTERNAL ORGANIZATION FOR THEIR MODEL WHICH IMPLEMENTS THE HIGHER LEVEL COGNITIVE BEHAVIORS ASSOCIATED WITH THE HUMAN CAPACITY FOR SELF-DIRECTION, AUTOCRITICISM, AND ADAPTATION. PRESENT COMPUTER MODELS OF COGNITIVE BEHAVIOR…