This manual describes two methods of assessing college students' conceptual structures in the interest of student evaluation. The focus is on the mental frameworks (conceptual structures) that enable students to remember and apply facts and theories. The guide offers two methods, the "ordered-tree" and the "fill-in-the-structure." An introduction…

Two kinds of perspectives governing the provision and preservation of knowledge, a universal and an ecological perspective, are discussed in this paper. In the first case, scientific observations are represented through a semantic interpretation of facts. This is illustrated with a series of experiments on semantic feature perception in the recall…

The focus of this document is upon zetetics, the science of research and artistic activity, and its role: to study the origin, growth, and transitions of human knowledge as a whole. The choice and allocation of subject matter within the curriculum is one of the central domains of expertise required of the general curriculum specialist. No matter…

This paper on the curiculum development process describes how primary sources may be used to teach history. Three frameworks related to historical understanding are presented: (1) the thinking skills/information processing framework; (2) the cognitive structure framework; and (3) the response theory framework. A curriculum development model is…

Course offerings with an international focus have expanded rapidly in secondary schools in the United States in the last decade, and research is needed to explore how global and international education goals may be achieved. Four models for organizing the research agenda are presented: (1) organization around a study of influences upon global and…

Based on a prior model on modularity of the brain, a new modular model of intrapersonal communication was developed which focuses on brain processing, encompassing both the structures and the functions of those structures in the creation of messages. The modular mind is a bio-social model of communication which presupposes a relationship between…

A study used structure mapping theory to examine the claim that children can understand metaphors based on shared object attributes before understanding those based on shared relational structure. The three kinds of metaphor used in the study varied in whether the shared information forming the basis for the interpretation was attributional,…

The controversial nature of the knowledge base of educational administration is discussed in this paper. Included are a definition of professionalism, a discussion of how to build and develop a knowledge base, and a review of the obstacles to knowledge base development. Elements of a consensual knowledge base include theory, practice, and other…

An alternative is suggested to conventional and propositional ways of thinking about curriculum matters. Curriculum theory is conventionally presented as statements of propositional knowledge even though the significance of tacit, non-propositional knowledge has been recognized in philosophy. It is suggested that attention be paid to how teachers…

This paper briefly reviews research on tasks in knowledge-rich domains including developmental studies, work in artificial intelligence, studies of expert/novice problem solving, and information processing analysis of aptitude test tasks that have provided increased understanding of the nature of expertise. Particularly evident is the finding that…

This paper presents a critique of current research on functional understanding of thinking and teaching. Three trends in cognitive research are examined. The "reification of mind" (the assumption that "mind" is an entity just as is body) is examined as a research trend that accepts knowledge as existing independent of the biographies, the…

Evidence from video tapes of experts thinking aloud and using analogies in scientific problem solving is presented. Four processes appear to be important in using an analogy: (1) generating the analogy; (2) establishing confidence in the validity of the analogy relation; (3) understanding the analogous case; and (4) applying findings to the…

This chapter presents a review of the latest research on advance organizers, and provides instructions for constructing and using them. The theoretical background of the advance organizers research is presented, beginning with the work of Ausubel, and this work is related to the writings of Piaget. An outline of advance organizer research is then…

This study examines the development of emotion in 108 children from a small Northern California city aged 6-7, 8-9, and 10-11 years. The paper specifically examines: (1) children's beliefs about emotion management that contribute to their preinteraction expectancies; (2) the sorts of socializing messages children appear to be responding to; and…

Cognitive psychology, which investigates how people learn and how people know, can aid writers, who want readers to read their material easily, understand the material, or comprehend the material--three levels of processing complexity. Because readers vary from being very knowledgeable in the subject of a document to lacking in knowledge, and…