A study on the effect of a structured problem-solving strategy on problem-solving skills and conceptual understanding of physics was undertaken with 189 students in 16 disadvantaged South African schools. This paper focuses on the development of conceptual understanding. New instruments, namely a solutions map and a conceptual index, are…

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate methods for developing cognitive processes in adult students. It discusses concept formation and concept attainment, problem solving (which involves concept formation and concept attainment), Bruner's three stages of learning (enactive, iconic, and symbolic modes), and visual thinking. A curriculum for…

Protocols were obtained from 22 subjects as they discovered the conditions under which equilibrium is obtained on a balance beam by predicting and observing the outcomes of a series of problems. The interviews revealed that subjects used a variety of heuristics to make predictions once they had isolated the two relevant features of the problem,…

The strength of intuitive knowledge is illustrated by the difficulty that individuals have in trying to restructure student misconceptions. In order to harness this power, intuition must be developed within the context of each new concept to be taught. An experiment with one possible approach to this instructional problem is described and…

Research supported in part by Veterans' Administration Medical Research Funds.

Research supported by National Science Foundation grant GE-3 to the University of Minnesota.

Although critical thinking is a pervasive educational objective, it remains inconsistently and imperfectly defined. The present paper attempts to sort out direct attempts at defining critical thinking. Such definitions are classified as representing one of three differing points of view: critical thinking as evaluation, critical thinking as…

Five reasons are discussed for teaching estimation involving utility, problem solving, concept formation, calculations, and attitude. Specific types of estimation are analyzed and examples given. (MP)

Attempts to distinguish between two major categories of creativity and draws from the fields of music and art for examples showing how these two types merge compatibly to produce a tangible outcome. (Author/RK)

As part of a larger investigation of preservice teachers' use of, and movement amongst, various modes of representing exponential relationships, this report focuses on one case study, that of Mike, whose facility in moving amongst representational registers was not matched by conceptual understanding of the underlying mathematical ideas as he…

Six year olds and college students were given two or four conceptual problems to solve, the number of rules within the series of problems being either one or two. Number of rules and the interaction of number of rules and age of subject were found to be significant variables. (CS)

Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association, San Francisco, August, 1968. Reprints from: L. Berrell Kornreich, Dept of Psychology, Univ of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 53201.

The operation of means-ends analysis (MEA) involves attempts at reducing differences between problem states and the goal state. It was paradoxically found that the more problem solvers knew of the goal state, the less they learned of the problem structure during the solution process. (PN)

Two experiments investigated why perceptual pretraining facilitates children's performance on concept problems involving a nonpreferred relevant dimension and preferred irrelevant dimensions. (JMB)