Examines the map-making process of middle-school students to determine which actions influence their accuracy, how prior knowledge helps their map construction, and what lessons can be learned from map making. Indicates that instruction that focuses on recognition of interconnections between map elements can promote map reasoning skills. (DSK)

Describes the evaluation of a British continuing teacher professional development program that focused on school improvement, school effectiveness, and action research. Teachers participated in the professional development, then conducted interventions in their schools to raise student achievement and evaluated program success using action…

Presents an application of the Cognitive Flexibility Theory (CFT) approach to creating hypertext for training undergraduate students through the interactive instructional program Auntie-EMM (Electronic Mail Mentor) in the use of e-mail embedding instruction within a specific context--the Wizard of Oz story. Demonstrates the effectiveness of the…

A study explored working memory (WM) capacity, WM task requirements, as well as effects between WM, skills, knowledge base, and intelligence in adults with mental retardation and children aged 3-6 years. Adults were better on measures reflecting skills and knowledge base. Children performed better in phonological and visuo-spatial WM tasks.…

Examined: (1) what is the self-concept of a 6-year-old child; (2) what is the picture of a child (real and ideal) in parents' minds; and (3) the relation between self-concept of a child and the picture in parents' minds. Found that perceptions of the child were positive, and clear conformity between parents' image of their child and children's…

A reading-specific multiple classification task was designed that required children to classify printed words along phonological and semantic dimensions simultaneously. Reading-specific multiple classification skill made a unique contribution to children's reading comprehension over contributions made by age, domain-general multiple classification…

This study examined developmental changes in lexical comprehension in 100 bilingual individuals at five age levels, all of whom had learned Spanish as a first language and English beginning at age 5. Although skills improved in both languages over time, by middle childhood performance was better in English, with this transition occurring earlier…

Addresses the implementation and evaluation of a constructivist course and extends the argument toward the induction of teachers into critical constructivism through their own action-research projects. Data is taken from a single case study illustrating the changes in the professional life and reflective practice of one teacher in Brazil. (AIM)

The Mayes Motor Free Compilation (MMFC) assesses mental ability in young (under age 2) children with motor disabilities. This study evaluated the concurrent validity of the MMFC by administering it and the Bayley Scales of Infant Development to normal children. Findings suggest that the MMFC provides a valid estimate of mental age, even without…

Evaluated the PREG conceptual model of human question asking. Found the model was sufficient as it accounted for nearly all of the questions produced by students, and was discriminating in that it could identify the conditions in which particular classes of questions are or are not generated. (Author/SD)

In this article, we draw from research on cognitive development, sociocultural learning, and organizational development to examine the key factors in teachers' professional learning. Our review of this literature suggests that looking at teachers' prior knowledge, the nature of their interactions, the representations they produce and use, and the…

D.V. Cicchetti, A.S. Kaufman, and S.S. Sparrow (this issue) use six criteria to evaluate the published findings from seven different studies of PCB exposure and neuropsychological function. They point out a number of weaknesses or flaws in each study and conclude that these weaknesses make the overall conclusion that PCB exposure negatively…

The study examined scaffolding interactions between deaf children and hearing mothers in which story reading was used as a tool to aid in the development of narrative comprehension and linguistic reasoning. The dyadic interactions were examined from the perspective of the theoretical works of Vygotsky (1934/1962, 1978, 1929/1981, 1960/1981). The…

This study investigates the role of basic elements of a learning context namely: the given tasks, the nature of the provided tools, and the pupils' gender in their choice of tools provided by an open problem-solving computer environment. Pupils' choice of tools is discussed through the description of an experiment involving the interaction of (30)…

This article presents three studies conducted in Canada and Australia that relate theory of mind (ToM) development to mental state discourse. In Study 1, mental state discourse was examined while parents and their 5-7-year-old children jointly read a storybook which had a surprise ending about the identity of the main character. Comments specific…