One of a series dealing with current issues affecting language arts instruction, this paper focuses on thinking skills. The paper begins by raising two issues: whether thinking skills should be taught as part of each subject area, as a separate skill, or both, and whether English and language arts teachers have a special role in the teaching of…

Predicated on the assumption that many of the problems exhibited by learning disabled children arise from difficulties they have in processing information, the program of research described in this paper was undertaken to (1) identify reading comprehension difficulties that are due to disorders in the reader, and (2) design and test effective…

A study focused on how the writer's knowledge of the language and use of a prewriting strategy for planning ideas affect the quality and efficiency of the writing. Three hypotheses were developed about how knowledge and strategy might influence writing performance: (1) independence (predicts that knowledge and strategy will independently improve…

This issue contains abstracts and critical comments for 10 papers. The reports are concerned with: (1) children's inferencing behavior; (2) instruction related to problem-solving and basic skills for seventh grade students; (3) remediation of children's subtraction errors; (4) investigation of young children's academic arithmetic contexts; (5)…

The question of whether basic skills courses belong in higher education is examined through a review of the literature. The following issues are discussed in terms of opposing and supporting positions: (1) economic concerns (recruitment of a wider pool of students necessitate basic skills courses but preserve enrollment levels); (2) academic…

This paper considers the style and structure of broadcast educational television programs in relation to learning outcomes, and proposes a study to identify those key factors which intervene or affect this relationship. The types of structure examined include simple or complex and self-standing or integrated programs, and types of style include…

A study involving 103 male and 117 female students entering a major urban university assessed the interaction between test anxiety and skill deficits. The effects of prior achievement and test anxiety on performance on two competency exams were also examined. Instruments consisted of minimum competency tests for reading comprehension and…

Adjunct questions were inserted after each of 12 computer-animated graphics sequences shown to 160 eighth-grade science students. These sequences presented two relationships in a purely spatial fashion. Four randomly assigned treatment groups received questions targeting one of the two relationships (temperature or molecular motion) over all or…

Offering guidelines for future Follow Through program design, documentation, and evaluation, this paper examines the bases of criticisms of standardized tests, describes learning characteristics of black children, and briefly enunciates a system for Follow Through evaluation efforts. Discussion of standardized tests addresses the following…

To assess the compatibility of miscue analysis and recall analysis as independent elements in a theory of reading comprehension, a study was performed that operationalized each theory and separated its components into measurable units to allow empirical testing. A cueing strategy model was estimated, but the discourse processing model was broken…

A study investigated children's ability to understand the use of deictic terms in oral and written language. The three deictic categories examined were pronouns (I, you), locatives (this, here), and motion verbs (come, go). Three groups of 24 second grade students completed an oral language task, a written language task, and a picture selection…

A literature review was conducted to identify factors in recent brain research related to the needs of elementary school students and to provide a comprehensive list of strategies from which teachers may choose to improve the "brain compatibility" of their classrooms. Annotations of 65 articles are provided. Articles are arranged…

A study investigated the idea that the amount of knowledge viewers extract from exposure to television is a function of the amount of mental effort involved in processing the program content, and that the mental effort invested in viewing is partly a function of people's expectations about the demand characteristics associated with the content.…

One area explored in the second (in-depth) phase of the Learning in Science Project was "children's science," defined as views of the world and the meanings for words that children have and bring with them to science lessons. The investigation reported focuses on the concept of "plant" held by 29 students. Data were obtained by…

A study examined cognitive disorders and syntactical deficiencies in the inmate populations of federal penitentiaries in Canada. The focus of the study was on the relationship between language development and cognitive ability. During the study, a total of 240 inmates from prisons throughout Canada were given hour-long interviews in which they…