Professional development is grounded in the developmental theories of Vygotsky in an attempt to better understand the mechanism underlying teacher development. The rationale for the use of Vygotskian framework is provided in the context of describing the various models of professional development. Within this theoretical framework, it is argued…

How do people reason about issues related to child and youth development? Are the patterns of reasoning in the lay public significantly different from the way experts reason about the issue? What can the anthropological theory of cultural models bring to efforts to improve the public's understanding of child and youth development? In this article,…

The dissertation presents a theory of semantics and pragmatics for both language and vision. I focus on sentences including proper names, descriptions, and attitude report verbs, and on the Necker cube. I propose the Open Instruction Theory (OIT), according to which the linguistic meaning of a sentence and the semantic contribution of visual…

Most educational researchers have heard the adage, "If you want to measure change in performance, don't change the measure." At the same time, however, what students need to know and be able to do may change over time as research on teaching and learning provides new insights into the educational process, science and technology advance, and…

One shortcoming in the literature on policy framing has been the absence of analytic models through which to explicate change. This paper advances research in this area in three related ways. First, it links policy frames to the actors who employ them. Second, based upon this linkage it proposes two complementary approaches for examining…

It has been suggested that the enterprise of developing mechanistic theories of the human cognitive architecture is flawed because the theories produced are not directly falsifiable. Newell attempted to sidestep this criticism by arguing for a Lakatosian model of scientific progress in which cognitive architectures should be understood as theories…

In this article, the authors present the framework of a model that integrates strategic product development decisions with the product's impact on future conditions of resources and the environment. The impact of a product on stocks of nonrenewable sources and sinks is linked in a feedback loop to the cost of manufacturing and using the product…

This article offers a stress theory-based conceptual framework for understanding proactive options for care-getting for patients living with cancer that is also relevant to patients living with other chronic or life-threatening illnesses. Barriers and facilitators to active efforts for obtaining responsive care from both informal and formal…

The distinction between "apophatic" and "cataphatic" listening is defined and analyzed. "Apophatic" listening is more or less devoid of cognitivist claims, whereas "cataphatic" listening involves cognition and questioning. Many of the papers in this volume are discussed along the continuum determined by these two types of listening.…

One of the most revolutionary advances in psychometric research during the last decades has been the systematic development of statistical models that allow for cognitive psychometric research (CPR) to be conducted. Many of the models currently available for such purposes are extensions of basic latent variable models in item response theory…

Introduction: The present study aimed to generate a model that would provide a conceptual framework for linking disparate components of knowledge translation. A theoretical model of such would enable the organization and evaluation of attempts to analyze current conditions and to design interventions on the transfer and utilization of research…

There is no agreement about the robustness of intuitive representations of the circulatory system and their susceptibility to change by instruction. In this paper, we analyse to what extent students with varying degrees of biology instruction and different ages (High School Health Science and Social Science students and first and final year…

The instructional metaphor is an important bridge to understanding, particularly when students are undertaking tasks that are conceptually difficult and outside their previous experience. It is suggested that the limitations of the implicit metaphor of the procedural control languages are the main cause of the problems experienced with delivering…

People tend to perceive ongoing continuous activity as series of discrete events. This partitioning of continuous activity may occur, in part, because events correspond to dynamic patterns that have recurred across different contexts. Recurring patterns may lead to reliable sequential dependencies in observers' experiences, which then can be used…

This study aims to be a contribution to a theoretical model that explains the effectiveness of the learning and decision-making processes by means of a feedback and mental models perspective. With appropriate mental models, managers should be able to improve their capacity to deal with dynamically complex contexts, in order to achieve long-term…