Presented is an alternative method for analyzing the van Hiele level of students' geometrical reasoning. The accuracy of students' answers may afford a description of acquisition and/or expertise for each of the van Hiele levels simultaneously rather than the traditional assignment and evaluation of one level at a time. (JJK)

Describes the history of five selected problems from mathematics that are included in an undergraduate honors course designed to utilize original sources for demonstrating the evolution of ideas developed in solving these problems: area and the definite integral, the beginnings of set theory, solutions of algebraic equations, Fermat's last…

Recommends that economics instruction begin a synthesizing process early by connecting discussion of the production possibilities curve and the supply curve. Suggests that linking the two is logical for conveying integrated economic thinking to beginning students. Argues that such a link makes it easier to discuss the competitive norm. (DK)

Semantic categorization and concept formation models were used as the bases for intervention with adolescents with language-learning disabilities. The approach embraced such teaching procedures as collaboration, holism, student centeredness, guided questioning and scaffolding, and semantic word webbing. The use of cognitive-linguistic training…

Interview data exemplify students' attempts to integrate the concepts of electrochemistry with related knowledge that they had previously constructed or acquired in other classes. The implications for minimizing potential misconceptions center on the difficulties students experience when using more than one model for explaining scientific…

Discusses children's ideas about colored objects and colored shadows, with special attention to the organization of these ideas into mental models. The clarification of these models provides instructional tools that serve to assess and confront students' naive conceptions. Subjects were visitors to a science museum who engaged in interactive…

The testing of a formal causal model of thinking about motion is described using a matching-pairs paper-and-pencil task. Subjects were asked to distinguish between examples of stereotypical motions by the similarity or difference of causes of pairs of motions. The results suggest that responses can be predicted by the model with the addition of an…

Describes a map skills unit used in a second grade classroom in which teachers and students engaged in activites that moved from the concrete to the abstract and from trips around the school neighborhood to a "trip" to Europe. An insert includes two map study ideas for use in intermediate grades. (SM)

Children's use of the middle concept was assessed in two developmental studies. Experiment 1, with kindergarten through fifth-grade students, showed marked improvement in the mastery of the middle concept across elementary grades. In Experiment 2, discrimination pretraining with two nonoverlapping stimulus sets transferred to the novel test…

Notes that in early childhood classrooms or outdoors, a water center can be the catalyst for building concepts, developing language, and promoting social skills. Discusses how to set up such a center and the teacher's role in facilitating learning through this medium. Includes 25 ideas for promoting discovery learning in water play. (HTH)

Performance of children with and without language-learning disabilities (ages 9-13) on 2 types of cognitive tasks was compared. Children (n=14) with language-learning disabilities performed at a level commensurate with a language-matched group on a concept formation task and at a level commensurate with a mental-age matched group on an…

Young children (n=117) were administered the What If Situations Test (WIST) using vignettes concerning inappropriate and appropriate touching. Analysis confirmed that the WIST is composed of six separate skill components: recognizing inappropriate touch, saying no to the perpetrator, leaving the situation, telling a trusted adult, accurately…

A former editor of this journal, 1967-69, selects an outstanding article from her tenure for its significance as the beginning of important studies in mathematics learning in young children. The article selected presents a modified technique for assessing a young child's acquisition of length conservation while eliminating or reducing the…

Considers radical constructivism in light of poststructuralism and hermeneutic phenomenology and shows how this forces a reassertion of the teacher's role in the student's constructing of mathematical knowledge. (48 references) (Author/MKR)

Discusses the role of concrete materials in teaching for understanding, including research on the use of concrete materials, seeing mathematical ideas embodied in them, and identifying what teachers want students to understand. (Contains 16 references.) (MKR)