One of the major focuses of this project was the revision of existing curriculum guides for grades one through six (the Contra Costa Social Studies Guides) and the development of guides for grades seven and eight. The emphases were: organization of learning activities under significant generalizations of main concepts; sequential treatment; inductive process emphasis; specific teaching strategies to promote cognitive and affective objectives; statement of behavioral objectives; and, the inclusion of evaluation materials in the guides. An open-ended generic curriculum development model is described, and applied to different curricular areas. An inservice training program with the dual purpose of learning as well as teaching, with emphasis on teacher feedback, is described and evaluated as the major dissemination tool. Two types of tests to measure thinking skills are included: fixed response, and free response to provide a means for ongoing evaluation. Test reliability and validity data, procedures for scoring, and a coding system are presented. The curriculum evaluation study design, methodology, and results are given. (SBE)