The two-part activity outlined in this paper reveals to undergraduate students that assumptions made in theory building remain unquestioned until one steps outside the initial realm of expectations, and that theories adopted have a demonstrable impact on behaviors. Part I defines a theory, describes the roles of assumptions and knowledge in…

A concept-map assessment consists of a task that elicits structured knowledge, a response format, and a scoring system. Variation in tasks, response formats, and scoring systems produce different mapping techniques that may elicit different knowledge representations, posing construct-interpretations challenges. This study examined two mapping…

Students' confidence calibrations on quizzes taken individually and again in structured learning groups were examined. Under conditions of weekly feedback on accuracy and confidence, students working as individuals and in groups were hypothesized to improve not only their accuracy, but also their calibration of confidence. Findings were based on…

This practicum attempted to promote teacher and student sensitivity to seven mainstreamed, oral, elementary school children with hearing impairments. It also aimed to promote more social interaction between students with impaired hearing and those with normal hearing and to effect a more comfortable transition from a special school to the…

A capstone course, entitled "Coordinating Seminar," has been developed at Rivier College, a small Roman Catholic liberal arts college in New England, as a vehicle for assessment in the Psychology Department. Assessment has been defined by Rivier College as a collegewide effort to document and verify the amount and quality of educational change in…

The 18 tests cited in this bibliography cover all age levels, although many are geared toward the secondary education level. The content of the tests focuses on the skills that individuals should possess in order to be effective consumers of goods and services. This document is one in a series of topical bibliographies from the Test Collection…

This study investigated the musical thinking of two composers through the use of concurrent protocol analysis and examinined their problems, funded experience, and reflective thinking. The objective was to determine the extent to which there is an observed or implicit paradigm of reflective thinking in the thinking of a practicing composer. The…

The characteristics and elements of situated learning are described, along with some approaches that use this perspective. Situated cognition proposes a radically different explanation of learning that conceives of it largely as a social phenomenon rather than a process occurring within the mind of the individual. Situated learning requires…

The purpose of this paper is to review literature on analogical reasoning, to work out the implications of Polya's model of analogical problem solving, and to propose an alternative model of instructional design based on the use of analogical reasoning. Justification of the model is based on research on the nature of analogical thought and an…

This instructional guide (accompanied by a video) teaches children from ages 6 to 12 about wildlife habitats. The instructional guide is divided into four parts and consists of supplementary activities to enhance the video. Each section of the guide provides an overview, objectives, story summary, key words in the video, discussion questions,…

A study involving 120 undergraduate students attending the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul (Minnesota) was undertaken to test the interactive effect of instructional strategy (structured versus constructed) with learner's prior domain knowledge in concept acquisition. Previous instructional design research on concept learning has focused on…

This study examined the attitudes toward and knowledge about suicide of gifted and unselected high school students. A questionnaire was developed which included items about societal factors related to suicide, warning signs of suicide, general knowledge of and attitudes about suicide, personal knowledge about suicide, and the intervention strategy…

To determine the impact of causal relationships and shared features in the use of analogy, subjects in two separate studies were informed of the behavior of six members of a little known primitive tribe and asked to make predictions on the behavior of additional tribe members based on their perceived similarities with the original group. Results…

Designed to determine if elementary school teachers have mastered the reading concepts most emphasized in undergraduate courses at the University of Northern Colorado, where they mastered these concepts, or why they have not mastered the concepts, the measure includes 51 items in multiple-choice format. The items cover "basic reading…

Shows that one of the most general processes in the development of cognitive structures consists in replacing exogenous knowledge by endogenous reconstructions that reconstitute the same forms but incorporate them into systems whose internal composition is a pre-requisite. Biologically equivalent process is discussed. (Author/AM)