Seven graduate students in a seminar on classroom computing received instruction in LOGO programming. Programming protocols were collected periodically and examined for errors and misconceptions; in-depth interviews were conducted in order to understand specific misconceptions better. As novice students transit from instruction to experience in…

This third of three articles on the ways in which people formulate their observations presents an analysis of the perspective or attitude dominating the discourse of an interview. The analysis is conducted according to a paradigm that views the speaker as the controller of discourse perspective. The relationships found in the analysis are…

This study focused on misconceptions related to light and vision. Researchers administered diagnostic tests about light, vision, and color before and after instruction to 227 fifth-grade students over a 2-year period. They also conducted 11 clinical interviews. The tests and interviews revealed that almost all students shared certain…

The purpose of this study was to determine how children at different ages understand the concept of temperature, examining particularly the logicomathematical aspects of the concept. In doing so, three developmental approaches were compared: (1) Piaget's structuralist approach; (2) Siegler's rule assessment approach; and (3) Anderson and…

A small set of relationships has been identified which appears to be sufficient for describing all molecular and cellular reactions and structures discussed in an introductory biology course. A precise definition has been developed for each relationship. These 20 relationships are of four types: (1) analytical; (2) spatial; (3) temporal; and (4)…

The feasibility of guiding students of moderate aptitude to select appropriate learning strategies while they are learning an imaginary classification system was investigated in a study that contrasted the effect of system-assigned strategies for learning concepts with strategies selected by students. Subject-matter content was based on a set of…

If education is concerned with imagination, it is important to know how educators perceive the term. For this purpose, an attempt was made to categorize ways in which teachers conceptualize imagination. Responses were obtained in a survey from 120 teachers who were registered in a graduate course on creative thinking. Participants ranged in age…

This essay clarifies what it means to know mathematics by examining ways of knowing multiplication and explores what those ways of knowing imply for the teaching and learning of mathematics in schools. It reviews the perennial argument about whether computational skill or conceptual understanding should guide the school curriculum. A mathematical…

Noting the growing interest in how writing activities might complement current teaching techniques and improve learning in mathematics, this paper presents a progress report on the use of writing assignments in freshman precalculus courses at a Minnesota university. The paper first presents a rationale for this teaching technique and the original…

Investigated were: (1) sex differences in the ability of 20 boys and 20 girls between 8 and 9 years of age to draw a plan of their house; and (2) variables related to such differences. Subjects were tested on four Piagetian tasks (verticality, horizontality, and two Euclidean space tasks), plan drawing, and vocabulary. After children completed the…

Vocabulary development, operationally defined as the isomorphism between an individual's store of concepts and the labels society uses to represent those concepts, is akin to concept development. Therefore, vocabulary development can be facilitated if presented in clusters of related concepts. One approach used to reinforce such basic concept…

Methods of optimizing instruction through the use of course knowledge portrayal methods were studied, based on a series of experiments conducted over 6 years. Sixteen university courses in the sciences, social sciences, and humanities were investigated through the application of cognitive theory to instruction. Attention was first focused on…

Discussed is the design and development of a physical education curriculum, incorporating principles discussed in the "Basic Stuff" physical education series. Four tasks are suggested for planning the curriculum: (1) develop a unit for activity instruction, where the concepts inherent in the sport or activity skills may be identified; (2) develop…

To investigate young children's understanding of metaphorical language, 90 chidren from preschool to third grade were read stories ending with metaphorical sentences of varying degrees of difficulty--sentences representing more or less predictable story outcomes and differing in the complexity and explicitness of their figures of speech. After…

In order to determine when children distinguish the real from the fictional in television programing, 170 adults and 157 children from 2nd, 4th, and 6th grades were shown 40 "bits" of television, each 5 seconds in length and representative of a wide range of program types. Subjects were asked to classify as real or make-believe 18 "factual" bits,…