It is noted that helping children learn how to solve problems has become a major goal for school mathematics. However, many children are not very successful at deciding what operation is appropriate for solving a given problem, and teachers often have difficulty describing or explaining how to identify the key features of a particular problem that…

Cognitive development during each of the major stages identified by Piaget is characterized by abilities to solve progressively more complex tasks (e.g., changes in the object concept during the sensori-motor stage, and in conservation of amount, weight, and volume during the concrete operational stage). Several theorists have suggested that these…

This paper introduces an artistic model of planning and problem solving. The model is based on a case study of processes engaged in by a college art student during the course of producing a senior thesis in batik (a wax-resist fabric dyeing process). Based on the premise that knowledge of the creative process is essential to understanding the…

One hundred twenty-eight undergraduates were randomly assigned to one of four treatment conditions formed by crossing two levels of task difficulty (computationally easy or difficult problems) with two modes of calculation (solving by hand or calculator). When solving problems by hand, there was a large increase in state anxiety between easy and…

The Center for Productive School and Classroom Discipline at Cleveland State University was created to bring together the disparate and disorganized theories of classroom management and to provide assistence to teachers with persistent classroom control problems by developing teacher competencies. The Center has four objectives: (1) to provide…

A study designed to investigate the association between Piagetian cognitive and long-term mnemonic (recall and recognition) levels and problem solving in mathematics was conducted with 152 eighth-grade students. Cognitive level was determined by two evaluations (seven months apart) of a subject's performance on a clinically administered balance…

Information about individuals' representations of problems was obtained from studies on reasoning and problem categorization. College students (N=62) participated in a study of the transition from concrete to formal reasoning using the pendulum and chemical yellow tasks. Over a 10-12 week period, 47 students participated in 10 training sessions on…

The relationship of aptitude, strategy, and cognitive task performance is explored through the use of mathematical models of performance time. Models of strategy and strategy-shifting on a spatial visualization task were tested individually for 30 male high school and college subjects. For each of three successive task steps (encoding,…

The research focusing on students' comprehension of mathematical word problems can be viewed from the math educator's perspective, the reading educator's perspective, or a pedagogical perspective. Math educators emphasize the math aptitude of the learners, a view suggesting that students must possess certain understandings to succeed in…

The authors review their work on helping physicaly handicapped persons gain spatial cognition through the interactive graphics learning environment of a computer LOGO system. The findings are said to demonstrate that the LOGO tasks are a viable part of a school curriculum for students with cerebral palsy, as shown by severely/profoundly…

Problem solving approaches often find a path from the givens to the unknown or from the unknown to the givens. This study explores those approaches using written protocols of Navy subjects while solving for the numerical value of an unknown from several knowns and a system of equations. For a subset of the items, solutions require subjects to…

This resource booklet is intended to present a new set of tools and procedures for making meetings more participative. It is aimed at anyone who plans programs, meetings, conferences, classes, workshops, seminars, or conventions--from corporation presidents to managers to youth group leaders. Unit 1 identifies some of the issues and problems…

The differences in responses of grade 6 boys and girls to selected items on a standardized test are examined. Data are the responses of approximately 36,000 children during 1978-79 to two test forms of the California Assessment Program's Survey of Basic Skills: Grade 6 (SBS:6). Performance on specific arithmetic items is studied and involves the…

The research literature on learned helplessness in exceptional children is reviewed and the authors' efforts to identify and retrain learning disabled (LD) children who have characteristics typical of learned helplessness are reported. Twenty-eight elementary aged LD children viewed as "learned helpless" were randomly assigned to one of four…

This study undertook to develop an improved conceptual system for explaining effective behavior; to build reliable measures of the components of that behavior; to develop and apply the measures internationally; and to validate the measures and concepts against objective criteria of achievement. An eight-nation team defined three sets of components…