A way to assess and improve organizational effectiveness is discussed, with a focus on factors that inhibit successful organizational performance. The basic assumption is that it is easier, more accurate, and more beneficial for individuals and organizations to identify criteria of ineffectiveness (faults and weaknesses) than to identify criteria…

Explicit classroom correction of the second language learner's errors is unnecessary, because errors are indications of the learner's current hypothesis, which may not necessarily match the target rule, or they may indicate that no hypothesis has yet been formulated by the learner. Explicit correction may be harmful because students can be pushed…

Students in adult basic education/general educational development classes need skills in analyzing and solving programs, extending beyond those learned through word problems in the mathematics curriculum. The following strategies can help students broaden their problem-solving skills: (1) act it out, (2) construct a table, (3) draw a picture, (4)…

The paper deals with the general concepts of reason and truth within education. A position is adopted to explain why reason needs considerably more attention, development, and exposure by educators to help counter the influence of pernicious, technical truths generated for society. Educators are chided a bit for becoming somewhat complacent and…

The key to the improvement of teacher education lies in the identification of a set of problems that legitimately can claim to be so generic and important that all who teach will be familiar with them. Such problems are what case studies portray. Case studies constitute the problemata of the professional curriculum. In the present state of…

This paper is an attempt to clarify the ambiguity surrounding the issue of adult creativeness. The significance and the limitations of the Genetic Epistemological paradigm in the conceptualization of adult inventiveness are discussed. A framework is suggested that provides an alternative for the study of adult creativeness from a…

This monograph was developed with the intention of addressing the concerns of high school mathematics teachers in Alberta (Canada) who want to base their programs on problem solving but have questions about effective and efficient ways to do so. Considered are the most basic philosophical questions, and a framework is provided to use in solving…

A study examined in detail the initial encoding of worked-out examples of mechanics problems by "good" and "poor" students, and their subsequent reliance on examples during problem solving. The subjects, three males and five females, were selected from responses to a university campus advertisement. Six of them were working…

Some aspects of the relationships among the symbolic representations (Rs) of problems given to students to solve, the Rs that students use to solve problems, and the accuracy of the solutions were studied. Focus was on determining: the mental Rs that students used while solving problems, the kinds of translation that takes place, the accuracy of…

Reported are early results of a research program that aims to improve children's mathematics learning by developing attitudes and strategies that support processes of interpretation and meaning construction in mathematics. Considerable research shows that many children learn mathematics as symbol manipulation rules, without meaning. Collaborative…

Mathematics is generally regarded as a well-structured discipline by educators and cognitive scientists. This leads to the analysis of the suggestion that practitioners begin investigating possibilities for teaching mathematics as if it were an ill-structured discipline, with more than one interpretation for mathematical statements. The paper is…

In an experiment using a conditional logic task, subjects were given a set of cards defining a particular conditional relationship. The subjects were required to determine the rule and predict the outcomes of the rule. Rule structure was varied by providing subjects with either a suggested rule, a partial rule, or no rule for each set of cards.…

Because previous research by Bayman and Mayer (1983) suggests that individuals who attempt to learn their first computer language develop a variety of misconceptions of the meanings of individual programming statements, this study investigated whether it is possible to enhance beginning programmers' understanding of the programming statements…

This paper proposes a semantic analysis in which meanings of word problems are structures that include class and order relations, and suggests a hypothesis of developmental levels that can account for children's performance of these problems at various ages. The different kinds of problems vary in the complexity of semantic structures and the…

A study was undertaken of specialized magazine editors' perceptions of audience characteristics as well as the perceived role of their publications. Specifically, the study examines the relationship between the editors' perceptions of reader problem recognition, level of involvement, constraint recognition, and possession of reference criteria and…