This study was designed to examine the effect of different kinds of adult mediation on the cognitive performance of young children who used computers. The study sample included 150 kindergarten children aged 5-6. The findings indicate that children who engaged in adult-mediated computer activity improved the level of their cognitive performance on…

Variability stands in the heart of statistics theory and practice. Concepts and judgments involved in comparing groups have been found to be a productive vehicle for motivating learners to reason statistically and are critical for building the intuitive foundation for inferential reasoning. The focus in this paper is on the emergence of beginners'…

This qualitative case study reports on processes and outcomes of the National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded System-Wide Change for All Learners and Educators (SCALE) project at the California State University, Northridge (CSUN). It addresses a critical challenge in studying systemic reform in complex organizations: the lack of methodologies that…

This collection sheds light on current research on teacher thinking in cultural contexts and identifies promising practices in teacher education that take the most salient contextual variables into account. Teacher cognition as influenced by race, ethnicity, and culture is explored in: (1) "Teacher Thinking in Urban Schools: The Need for a…

This report is the culmination of a process that began in 1994, at a planning meeting to determine whether there was a sufficient knowledge base to inform the development of a research agenda on the education of language minority children. A committee was established to review what is known about the linguistic, cognitive, and social processes…

Criteria for relevant classroom assessments are discussed, and a biofunctional model of learning assessment is presented. In classroom assessment, the following criteria must be considered: (1) assessment approach (process-oriented and outcome-oriented); (2) assessment context (knowledge and higher-order thinking skills); (3) assessment method…

This paper attempts to merge specific psychological theories of knowledge acquisition, the impact of pictures on cognitive processes, and theories of effective pedagogical approaches to foreign language learning, in order to assess commercially available software for its effectiveness, specific impact on learning, and classroom uses. The first…

The program evaluated in this paper has a three-pronged design which includes two holistic strategies, Integrated Skill Development (ISD) and Thinking Across the Curriculum (TAC), in addition to the Supplemental Curriculum (SC). A pretest-posttest control group design with matching was employed. The program was conducted at the Cleveland School…

One area explored in the second (in-depth) phase of the Learning in Science Project was "children's science," defined as views of the world and the meanings for words that children have and bring with them to science lessons. The investigation reported focuses on the concept of "electric current" held by 43 elementary school…

The University of Victoria Program offers university-level courses mainly in the humanities and the social sciences to prisoners at Matsqui and Kent Institutions. Within this liberal arts approach there is a structural developmental thrust to promote cognitive and moral development and not simply to provide a general education or job skills.…

The application of a scientific attitude to the field of education is reviewed, with particular regard to the varying perspective concerning the cognitive development and learning processes of children. Flaws in the "top-down" system of research and information dissemination, in which universities are viewed as "producers" and…

The impact of educational reforms in Brazil has been assessed by the Brazilian Evaluation System of Basic Education (SAEB), a tool designed to measure the cognitive achievement of students. The SAEB comprises tests of Portuguese grammar and writing, mathematics, and science. Schools have used the SAEB mainly for comparisons among groups of…

Explores what it means to think in a target language, discusses those factors determining planned and unplanned use of more than one language for thinking, considers the role of target-language thinking in improving language ability, and examines mental translation in the reading of intermediate college French. The article concludes that benefits…

Review of models traditionally used by different disciplines to describe thinking processes led to development of a general model and testing in six pure and applied matched disciplines (physics, engineering, psychology, education, English literature, composition). Professors applied the models to their courses in different ways and used various…

The growing body of research investigating how people search for or locate information in a variety of materials is reviewed and extended. Although the nature of materials and the complexity of locating tasks varies in the seven articles, each aims to elucidate the conditions that affect search processes. (SLD)