Determining students' knowledge structure is important for assessing what a learner knows about a domain of knowledge. Traditional assessment methods are not always appropriate for exploring students' knowledge structure and changes during the learning period. This study investigates how the existing knowledge structure of the learners interacts…

During the last few decades, the author and his colleagues have developed an instructional framework for infusing thinking into content instruction in every subject and at every grade level. In thinking-based learning, teachers explicitly teach students thinking strategies and important habits of mind and then give students opportunities to apply…

Elementary education majors (n=22) in a science methods course at a small liberal arts college in the U.S. Midwest were asked to write a paper about science in their own lives. Based upon their writings, the students were categorized according to the five ways of knowing described by Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, and Tarule: silence, received,…

Strategic communication scholars agree that planning is critical to human action. An investigation tested plan modification aspects of cognitive planning theory. Two experiments tested whether success and failure of a plan served as predictors of plan modification and whether individuals can accurately predict whether and how they will modify a…

The major goals of this study were to conceptualize a framework for analyzing student conceptions of mathematics, gather baseline information about the conceptions of mathematics held by mathematically talented students and by average high school students, and begin to generate hypotheses about how they are related to the nature of student…

This investigation is part of a combined research/curriculum development project in which children's learning is being examined in the context of developing and testing instructional units on 3-D geometry in grades 3, 4, and 5. There are two components to the article. First, the strategies and cognitive constructions that students utilize to…

This paper describes the characteristics of graphic techniques, such as networks, pattern notes, semantic maps, and graphic organizers, that can be used to acquire knowledge of relationships between concepts in a content area. The implications for research and instructional design are considered, and nine types of these techniques are described…

This paper presents a research study that explored the nature of the cognitive preferences of school administrators. It offers insight into the school administrators' mode of information processing. The first of three sections concerns the informational centrality of school principals. Citations from the literature are used to present the ways…

This paper defines a schema as a memory structure representing a general concept and its framework of associated concepts, and identifies the three processes by which learning can occur in individuals whose memories are schema-based, i.e., accretion, tuning, and restructuring. Ways in which schema might influence instructional design are then…

In this study a distinction is made between routine, semiroutine, and nonroutine problems based on the problem solver's knowledge. Routine problems are solved by applying a known procedure, semiroutine problems require planning that uses functional knowledge, and nonroutine problems require generation of new functional knowledge. Nonroutine…

Curriculum knowledge cannot be legitimized until its method of construction is examined. Dominant curriculum theories, those that are well established by tradition, usually provide research results reflecting a deterministic or imposed reality. The basic premise of this paper is that curriculum theorizing has, for the most part, been a utilitarian…

Because schemas are often defined imprecisely and intuitively, the term "schema" is often misapplied in research. Consequently, researchers may fail to understand the complete scope of the phenomenon they are studying. Discussions of children's gender schema development and the influence of the gender schema on children's social…

A proper understanding of the role of culture in development can make a significant contribution to the development of theory and offer a more certain guide to practice than current theories afford. Three frameworks for interpreting the influence of nature and nurture on individual development assign biological and environmental factors a direct…

Determining the extent of consistency between distinct concepts has become increasingly important in current theorizing about the development and organization of cognitive structure. This paper discusses several conceptual and measurement issues that must be addressed in analyses of interconcept consistency: the distinction between connectivity…

Four concepts are considered in light of their impact on instructional technology and design, i.e., the value status of technology, the proliferation of worldviews, equity in education, and the relationship of ethical issues to practice. The assumption that instructional technology is a value-neutral method of conveying instructional information…