This bibliography offers detailed summaries of five articles (published between 1983 and 1993) that provide practical and theoretical advice on designing writing assignments that can serve as more than just evaluation tools. The articles summarized in the bibliography confirm common sense but also dispel some common misconceptions about student…

Understanding the connections between students' levels of intellectual development, their view of the nature of knowledge, and their developing argumentative writing skills is central to helping students learn to write good argumentation. The first researcher to develop a model of intellectual development among college students was William Perry…

In an effort to investigate the effects of a teaching strategy that helps students to identify concept conflicts through experimentation and guided investigation on students' conceptual changes and learning outcomes, 596 students (393 junior high school, 170 senior high school, and 33 college students) were administered two solution tests…

A discussion of functional language proficiency considers several widely-accepted theories of cognition, draws parallels between specific stages of intellectual maturity and development of second language proficiency, and suggests ways in which teachers may be able to help students progress from one stage to another within the context of foreign…

The 14 essays included in this collection are an effort to apply philosophical thinking to educational themes, in the belief that critical thought is of the first importance in the conception and organization of educational activities. The book attempts to wed an analytical style of thought to a concern with practical issues. Part I provides a…

Since E.L. Thorndike's landmark 1917 study of the complexity of reading comprehension, inferential research has generally focused on either inference as a developmental process or the nature of inferences made during reading. In his 1930 study, R. W. Tyler established that inference could be objectively measured. S. G. Paris conducted several…

One of a series of activity guides designed to aid teachers in developing the thinking skills of intermediate grade students, this publication offers a variety of learning activities and resource materials. The activities and resources include: a calendar which lists important days and birthdays in December, January, and February; poems; word…

It was generally hypothesized that two procedural deficiencies underlie the failure of most preschoolers to produce informative referential communications or to understand that ambiguous communications directed toward them are faulty. The first is a deficiency in understanding the difference rule (the fact that an informative message should…

This report, written in Finnish with a 10-page summary in English, concerns research on the interrelationship between Piagetian operations, various aspects of information processing capacity and mathematical thought processes and strategies related to number and measurement. In a theoretical discussion, Piaget's research on mathematico-logical…

Forty-three regular classroom teachers were provided with four one-hour inservice sessions about learning disabilities. Pre- and post-test administrations of the Learning Disabilities Information Inventory were utilized to measure change resulting from these sessions. Results indicate inservice sessions are a viable means of increasing classroom…

Research designed to determine whether the phenomena observed by Piaget were task specific was performed. The results did not confirm Piaget's notion that topological concepts develop prior to the concepts of Euclidean geometry. (SD)

Two children were observed for half a year and specific topics were examined in child communication: how much information is transmitted through various channels of verbal and nonverbal communication? Is specific information transmitted through specific channels? Can relationships between the channels be expressed through some type of formula?…

In the experiment discussed, three modes of presenting materials to second grade students were compared. Data analysis showed that the abstract mode was less successful than the others, but there was no clear difference between the manipulative and pictorial modes. (SD)

This article examines and questions the objectives, materials, techniques, and teacher motivations of affective education. (BD)

Introduces biology teachers to the central ideas of Piaget's theory of intellectual development. Also presents a scheme of biology instruction and classroom procedures based on a Piaget-related theory of learning. (PEB)