This study explored the effect of experiential and experience-based approaches to learning and instruction on transitional first grade students' (a) acquisition and use of economic concepts and (b) economic reasoning ability as indicated by the presence or absence of misconceptions about economic concepts. A pretest-posttest control group design…

This book contains 114 experiments, mostly behavioral, with animals that are commonly found in nature. Each experiment is a five-step procedure: question, hypothesis, methods, result, and conclusion. Chapter 1 is devoted entirely to explaining these five steps, which together constitute the scientific method. The experiments are in the last part…

This theme issue of the serial "Educational Foundations" contains five articles devoted to the topic of "Alternative Conceptualizations" of the foundations of education. In "The Concept of Place in the New Sociology of Education," Paul Theobald examines the notion of place in educational theory and practice. Janice…

The purpose of this study was to determine the influence of an STS curriculum (ChemCom) versus a traditional chemistry curriculum (GenChem) on student formal reasoning level. Cluster random sampling was used to select the sample (N=123). Gender differences in formal reasoning level were also investigated. The abbreviated GALT pretest was…

This paper looks at the ideas of R. Skemp which emphasize fostering "intelligent learning" in the teaching of mathematics. Skemp posits that schematic learning takes place when new concepts are constructed by the learner. Three modes of building such internal schema are proposed. Teachers are urged to ensure that at every stage the new…

Designed for educators of children in kindergarten through grade six, this resource guide provides activities related to the concepts of peace and conflict. The activities are not, for the most part, sequenced and can be used singly to introduce concepts or to supplement other lessons. The activities also can be grouped into a unit of study, and…

An ethnographic study was conducted with the goal of evaluating the botanical concepts of sixth-grade students. One aspect of the study involved examination of the levels of abstraction students use for naming plants. Nine sixth-grade students were interviewed individually. Each was asked to identify the plants seen in a set of 64 slides and…

A project in Illinois created a 17-member committee, reviewed literature, and conducted a telephone survey of all 51 state home economics supervisors in the United States to create a conceptual framework for secondary home economics. The framework was reviewed and refined by the participants and is being published. Additional materials developed…

Children rarely cite more than one strategy when asked to explain how they solved a particular arithmetic problem, hence their verbal explanations will not necessarily reveal whether they have considered multiple strategies on that problem. However, previous work has shown that, when asked to explain their performance on a task, children often use…

This booklet is part of the "Getting to Grips with..." series, which is intended for the general reader who wants to understand important trends in vocational education and training. It is designed to provide the reader with an understanding of the concept of key technologies, to describe the potential importance that this way of…

In the course of a longitudinal study that addressed the questions of how children learn to comprehend what they read and how they learn science concepts, many other research questions emerged. The original longitudinal study investigated how children learn to comprehend what they read. Three school districts with fairly stable student…

Originally conceived as an adjunct to the publication "A Planning Guide to the Preschool Curriculum," this home activities guide can be used by any parent of a young child. The guide consists of 44 units (each centered on a specific concept) designed to provide a variety of cognitive, sensory, and motor experiences. Most of the home activities…

This research synthesis identifies a number of important concepts regarding the teaching of problem solving skills to students in grades K-12. Studies investigated what problem solving skills are and whether they can be taught, as well as how problem solving can be organized in the curriculum and how it should be taught. Major findings from the…

This paper documents the achievement monitoring component of a three-year study on the acquisition of addition-subtraction problem-solving skills by young children. A set of performance objectives contained in or ancillary to ten instructional units on sentence-writing for verbal problems and algorithms specified test content. Tests measuring…

Using schema theory as a contextual framework, three studies were conducted to examine the effects of two triggering mechanisms on transfer of learning across two noncontiguous passages: similar terminology for shared concepts and a brief review of the first passage read immediately before the second passage. The first two studies served to pilot…