A faculty development program designed to encourage critical thinking skills across the curriculum at the University of Wisconsin Eau Claire is described in this report. The program's goal was to stimulate faculty to add critical thinking to their pedagogical objectives. Faculty participants attended six 4-hour meetings designed to heighten their…

This book, intended for researchers in the psychology of reading and language, college students in psychology and education, teachers of reading, and educators in general, is designed to be used in a course on the psychology of reading or the psychology of language comprehension. The book contains the following chapters: (1) "An Introduction and…

This curriculum guide is designed to aid in the planning and execution of a writing course for verbally gifted elementary school students. The course is designed for students ranging in age from 8-11 years whose verbal reasoning skills are at least 3 years above grade level. The course instructs students in the fundamentals of communication…

The concept of transfer, which refers to the brain's ability to generalize or situations in which perceptions and behaviors are generalizable, can be of use to teachers of English as a second language (ESL) students and basic writers. What is called "writing across the curriculum" and most classroom writing instruction are based on unexamined…

Articles in this journal issue focus on aspects of writing instruction and research. The articles discuss the following topics: (1) recent changes in the teaching of composition, (2) a writing sequence for the junior high/middle and secondary school English curriculum, (3) 10 writing-for-learning tasks to use throughout the curriculum, (4) writing…

Attempting to present empathy as a vital ingredient of effective interpersonal listening, this paper first provides a brief historical tracing of the major trends in listening theory and research. This review then serves as a backdrop for a partial justification of an empathic listening emphasis that includes a clarification of some misconceptions…

An emphasis needs to be placed on the use and development of critical thinking skills at the elementary, secondary, and higher education levels. Critical learning that fosters active student participation, goal setting, and probing into concerns through dialogue with other students and the teacher is particularly needed to help students learn to…

Recognizing a word in a meaningful text involves processes that combine information from many different sources, and both bottom-up processes (such as feature extraction and letter recognition) and top-down processes (contextual information) are thought to interact when skilled readers recognize words. Two similar experiments investigated word…

As evidenced by the increasing awareness of metaphorical thought (and other nonlinear and aesthetic thinking structures) in literature on the development of composing and comprehending skills, teaching metaphor as a mode of thinking is an important function of schooling, especially in the English classroom. It is important that the classroom…

Inner speech, the process by which words are related to and converted into conceptual thoughts, is a topic of central importance within the field of speech communication, and the exploration of its role in the cognitive processes can facilitate the development of creative, logical, and critical thinking across the liberal arts curriculum. Four…

Arguing that educators have evolved past the introductory computer literacy stage and now need an enhanced understanding of the uses of the computer as an essential tool of the trade, this paper identifies three factors that need to be considered when designing staff development programs: (1) a review of different cognitive abilities and skills…

Visual processing of televised information was compared among 85 Japanese and 111 American boys and girls at the kindergarten and 4th-grade levels. The literatures on cognition and learning indicate that language and child rearing factors are more conducive to the development of iconic processing skills in Japanese children than in American…

In mathematics, situations calling for reconstruction of a transformation are frequent. In such situations, children aged 6 to 7 concentrate on the states, combining them in different ways. The present research aims to illustrate that difficulties and strategies observed with children 6-7 years old are not specific to this age level, but are also…

This study investigated the rates of successful mathematical performance and errors of information processing in third-grade children in California and continued an investigation of these factors in sixth-grade children. The objectives were to: (1) identify areas of mathematics in which the children had recognizable strengths and weaknesses, (2)…

The reading objectives and measurement specifications in this paper are provided for teachers and other educators responsible for pupil instruction and for test development specialists involved with the preparation of the Texas Educational Assessment of Minimum Skills. Following lists of objectives and general specifications, the paper outlines a…