The purpose of this study was to assess structural knowledge change across a two-week workshop designed to provide high-school teachers with training in Java and Object Oriented Programming. Both before and after the workshop, teachers assigned relatedness ratings to pairs of key concepts regarding Java and Object Oriented Programming. Their…

As part of course requirements twenty-eight preservice teachers in a field-based content reading course created a series of self-portraits that illustrated their concerns and perceptions about teaching content reading. They accompanied their drawings with dialogue. Analysis of the portraits indicates that arts-based techniques have the potential…

The aim of this study was three-fold: (1) to determine 6th, 8th and 10th grade students' environmental knowledge and attitudes in Turkey; (2) to investigate the effect of the grade level and gender on students' environmental knowledge and attitudes; (3) to explore how environmentally responsible behaviour is related to environmental knowledge,…

In the literature, learners' cognitive development is mainly discussed with respect to changes in learners' content-dependent knowledge (conceptual change or growth). Additional dimensions of time and complexity may also be taken into account to describe cognitive processes in at least three dimensions. We discuss these three dimensions of…

This study examined patterns of change and stability in religiosity over the life course. Open-ended interviews with 129 adults aged 65 and older provided a rich source of data for applying a life course perspective to the study of religion. Two theoretical constructs from the life course perspective (i.e., trajectories and transitions) were used…

This book articulates and defends the "theory theory" of cognitive and semantic development: the idea that very young children just beginning to talk are engaged in profound restructurings of several domains of their knowledge. These restructurings are analogous to theory changes. The children's early semantic development is closely tied…

This paper reports on a three-year case study of a secondary biology teacher that explores the use of two instruments: The Teachers Pedagogical Philosophy Interview (L. Richardson and P. Simmons, 1994) and the Secondary Science Teacher Analysis Matrix (J. Gallagher and J. Parker, 1995). The a priori research questions that guided this case study…

Schemata based notions need not replace, but should be reflected in, product-centered reading tests. The contributions of schema theory to the psycholinguistic model of reading has been thoroughly reviewed. Schemata-based reading tests provide several advantages: (1) they engage the appropriate conceptual processes for the student which frees the…

Researchers have demonstrated that differences exist in the planning and interactive decision making tendencies of expert and novice teachers. This study investigated whether such differences exist between more experienced preservice teachers (n=6) and less experienced preservice teachers (n=6). Each teacher planned, taught, and reviewed two…

Participants at a conference on mathematics teaching discussed what it means to know and understand a subject and what teachers need to know, understand, and believe in order to teach a subject to elementary learners. The first section of the report covers the first day of the conference that was spent in a series of whole-group sessions.…

This document contains the following 30 papers (most with short abstracts): "The Teacher Transition Response" (Carley); "There Must Be Some Meaning to This: Storytelling as a Research Method" (Group for Collaborative Inquiry); "The Impact of Patient, Social and Political, Practice Environment, and Physician Factors on the Integration of Health…

This book summarizes and applies the last 2 decades of research on cognitive psychology to the preparation of educational administrators. Following a foreword by Larry Cuban and an introduction by Philip Hallinger, Kenneth Leithwood, and Joseph Murphy, part 1 explores how cognitive perspectives illuminate the conceptualization of problems faced by…

This study examines the construct of problem representation and the processes used by learners to construct or modify problem representations in problem-solving situations. Students (n=14) from freshman calculus courses at the University of California at San Diego participated in videotaped interviews in which they were asked to think aloud as…

The processes by which conceptual knowledge is constructed during mathematical problem solving were studied, focusing on the cognitive activity of learners (i.e., the ways they elaborate, reorganize, and reconceptualize their solution activity). Underlying this research is the view that learners' mathematical conceptions evolve from their activity…

This study sought: (1) to develop and collect evidence of reliability and validity for self-report instruments to measure cognitions about the experience of having a child with a disability; and (2) to examine the relationship of these cognitions with measures of stress and well-being among parents of children with disabilities. Cognitions…