The role of evaluation in improving academic performance is explored. A theoretical development of formative evaluation in higher education and a critique of higher education in the light of that theory is presented. Grading, feedforward, feedback, course length, and cumulative assessment are discussed. (Author/MLW)

Concludes that although sentence-long context did not facilitate the reading accuracy of primary grade children, the children did appear to be exploiting contextual information in their reading of sentences, with a relatively high proportion of reading errors being contextually acceptable. (FL)

Discusses whether formal thought constitutes a structured whole and role of propositional logic in advanced reasoning. Presents aspects of advanced reasoning model, considering hypothesis generation/testing as central processes in intellectual development. Argues that advanced reasoning schemata are linked by these processes and should be…

Concludes that junior high school students encode movies better than prose, but that college students encode both equally well. (FL)

Reports on a study in which attempts were made to instantiate the same task in a series of classroom lessons and activities and which used two process coding systems to evaluate teacher performance. Discusses the strengths and weaknesses of each type of coding system. (FL)

Studied how therapists (N=45) evaluate their performance in relation to burnout. Therapists responded to questionnaires, and 15 subjects were interviewed. Studied responses through content analysis. Results indicated a narrow perspective for self-evaluation focusing on activities within the employing agency and counselor-client relationships.…

Describes some of the ways early adolescents respond to reading and thinking tasks and details the development of procedures for observing and analyzing children as they complete such tasks. (FL)

The author seeks to clarify the difficulty and complexity of the things youngsters must do to learn mathematics, and to have teachers question their own views about children in redefining mathematics instruction. (MP)

Spatial ability and Piagetian tasks were administered to 80 schooled/non-schooled Fulanis (primarily nomadic and hunters) and agriculturalists (living a settled life). Results indicated that Fulanis develop spatial skills adapted to the ecological demands of their lives and that schooled students performed better on Piagetian tasks than…

Describes cognitive mapping techniques compatible with the information processing view of human thinking. Student knowledge was assessed by clinical interview and performance on paper-and-pencil tasks. Concept maps and semantic networks were then constructed. Uses that these assessment tasks and representations might have in science education are…

Describes a study using experimental and control classes to test the effect of exercises in creative thinking. The tenth-grade students were able to increase their ability to think creatively. (Author/SA)

A social cognitive developmental model is presented integrating a Piagetian developmental model and Flavell's processing model, to describe three aspects of development. The utility of the model was tested in two studies. The results demonstrate that it is possible to increase children's social cognitive abilities instructionally. (Author/CTM)

Mathematical tasks calling for relational thinking were given to 60 children of Indian, Pakistani, or Bangladeshi origin who had spent their school lives in England, 60 who had arrived within the past 3 years, and 60 British children. Differences in the ability to abstract, hypothesize, and generalize were studied. (KC)

Third-grade children were studied to determine whether (1) children can apply a cognitive strategy learned in language arts to television programs, (2) training improves comprehension of videotaped material, and (3) these skills generalize to other settings. Thirteen references and descriptions of the 10 videotapes and film used are provided. (MER)

Investigated the effects of individual difference variables of field dependence/independence and spatial visualization ability on the performance of college students in three modes. The extent to which four variables account for variability in retention test performance on certain tasks was also viewed. (MP)