This paper reports on the learning of difficult and complex concepts, the characteristics of these concepts that make them difficult for students to learn and understand well, the kinds of misconceptions students acquire, and the difficulty of changing these mistaken beliefs. A scheme, the Conceptual Stability Scheme, is presented for analyzing a…

This lesson plan uses group activity and manipulative materials to teach English-speaking students (ages 15-16) of diverse ethnic backgrounds an operatonal understanding of the Pythagorean Theorem. It is based on theories of constructivism and holism and includes teacher instructions, discussion questions, a retrospective vision, and an ancillary…

To explore controversial findings concerning some of Piaget's claims, four experiments investigated conditions under which children use a criterion of movement in attributing life to objects. In the first experiment, children ages 4 through 7 participated in a recognition task involving the identification of objects to which they attributed life.…

This essay examines several points that C. Gratton Kemp presents in his book "Foundations of Group Counseling." (RC)

From the insights of ancient and modern commentators and historical and psychological research, the author strived to determine briefly: (1) what Thales meant by his statements, (2) how he came to such conclusions, and (3) why such conclusions are now regarded as marking the dawn of Western philosophy. (Author/RK)

This article claimed that the discourse of ordinary people concealed at least four significantly divergent conceptions of moral education, and showed how the implications for curriculum which flow from each of these differ seriously. (Editor/RK)

Several concepts regarding Keres Indian deities are discussed. (NQ)

The author stated the case for saying that there is no real distinction between moral education and indoctrination and a sketch of moral education was attempted in order to yield the distinction needed. (Editor/RK)

The need to make conceptual decisions, as well as to judge what is thus brought into the domain of art as good or poor art, is unavoidable. This paper was designed to dramatize these facts and show some of the basic problems encountered in the attempt to do so. (Author/RK)

Investigated the thought patterns of children classified as "nonanimistic." It was found that the subjects did not fully grasp the implications of the life concept as certain life-related concepts were more accurately generalized than others. (DP)

The acquisition of verb meaning is discussed and compared with the acquisition of simple noun meaning. Evidence presented from three experiments with children and adults indicates that (1) verbal meanings are relatively slow to be acquired; (2) the acquisition of verb meaning involves the gradual addition of semantic components; and (3) verbs are…

Two experiments tested the Conceptual Dependency Theory, stating that verbs are represented in memory as combinations of actions and relations encoding underlying conceptual structure. Experiment I results supported the conceptual complexity hypothesis, while II rejected complexity for imagery as the predictor of performance. (CHK)

Article considered the source, nature, and role of values in human behavior. (Author/RK)

The purpose of this study was to investigate the elementary student's concept of environmental image of favorite places. The research was based on drawings and verbalizations from two groups of students, one rural and the other suburban. Under such conditions, some general trends and conclusions concerning environmental images were observed. (MA)