Discusses a study to investigate student images of and attitudes toward geography instruction in 15 Nebraska high schools. Statistical analysis of 30 statements relating to geography indicated that the majority of students held positive opinions about the discipline's usefulness and its importance as a high school subject. (Author/DB)

Students given evaluation level objectives did as well on relevant and incidental learning as did a control group, while those given knowledge level objectives achieved less incidental learning at the evaluation level. (Editor)

To determine the extent of students' confidence-judgment accuracy (CJA) and the relationship of this memory-monitoring ability to overall test performance, undergraduates in a psychology course supplied confidence-judgments along with their answers on multiple-choice test items. CJA correlated positively with test performance. (Editor/SJL)

Presents a study concerned with relating the understanding of the functioning of mass media, particulary television and newspapers, to the formation of public opinion regarding economic issues. Concludes that frequent exposure to news develops a false impression that the public understands more than they really do. (JMF)

Rated first through fifth graders' political knowledge and recall of a simulated news story. Used path analysis to determine relationships among grade level, political knowledge, recall of specific story information, and generation of inferences from the story. Results suggested that children's domain-specific knowledge is more influential in…

Investigated effects of innovative teaching techniques on health knowledge among two hundred 9- to 11-year olds in rural India randomly selected from Children's Working Groups. Teachers attended a workshop to learn innovative strategies, including use of audiovisual aids, games, and music. Results indicated that children's knowledge level improved…

Word problems as used within the culture of mathematics education often promote a suspension of sense making by the students. In the papers in this issue, an alternative conceptualization of word problems is proposed that calls for mathematical modelling that takes real world knowledge into account. (SLD)

A study of 90 children in third, fourth, and fifth grade investigated the students' ability to detect the idioms embedded in 12 humorous items and their ability to explain the idioms. Results showed that idiom comprehension improved significantly between the ages of 8 and 11 years and that idiom detection was easier than idiom explanation. (CR)

Chest pain was identified as a specific medical problem space, and disease classes were modeled to define it. Results from a test taken by 628 medical residents indicate a second-order factor structure that suggests that chest pain is a multidimensional problem space. Implications for medical education are discussed. (SLD)

Studied the efforts of Hong Kong to embrace information technology (IT) in education, focusing on a survey of IT skills and attitudes among four cohorts of incoming college freshmen. Findings for 2,330 students over the 4 years show that in each successive year freshmen report higher levels of computer skills and greater confidence in using…

Agricultural communications students (n=330) from 11 universities were most aware of biotechnology effects on food, less aware of effects on health and the environment. They were somewhat accepting of genetic modifications for plants, not humans. Sources of biotechnology knowledge were science classes, labs, and university professors' beliefs.…

Reviews the framework of the original Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, a scheme for classifying educational goals, objectives, and standards, describing how the revised Taxonomy differs from the original. The paper discusses the newly developed Taxonomy Table, examining its two dimensions (cognitive processes and knowledge) and illustrating how…

Examines communication about contraception and specific knowledge of oral contraceptives (OCs) in a sample of Norwegian high school students. More females than males discussed contraception at least monthly. Discussions were predominantly held with peers and not adults. Females were far more knowledgeable about OCs than males. The most significant…

The complex relationship between cognitive developmental research and children's science curricula is explored, focusing on the tendency to attribute shortcomings in performance to the child's age, the confounding of weak knowledge with developmentally based deficiency, and emphasis of stage-based constraints on children's thinking. (SLD)

Three experiments involving 350 undergraduates addressed whether implicit learning is sensitive to a subject's entire range of learning or whether explicit knowledge is an important factor in the more complex learning of an artificial grammar. Results suggest that implicit learning occurs only at the simplest level of complexity. (SLD)