Order and entropy exist in all human and environmental processes. Technological innovation begins with entropy, and problem solving creates order. Humans learn by building order through conceptualizing but create entropy by not using a wider range of learning methods. (SK)

Interviewed 5-, 6-, 7-, 8-, and 10-year olds, and adults regarding their knowledge about primary-consciousness, reflective-consciousness, and control activities. Found that the recognition that people do not engage in conscious mental activities when unconscious is still developing during the late middle-childhood years. (Author/KB)

This article discusses outcomes of a study that indicated gifted children as young as 6 years old can use metacognitive processes for solving math problems, are aware of knowing certain operations and are able to use them automatically, and know which strategy they usually use for solving problems. (Contains references.) (CR)

Reviews research on learning among visitors to museums and other interpretive sites. Discusses central and peripheral information processing, need for cognition, intrinsic motivation, visual memory, and metacognition. Describes an evaluation model for exhibits and programs that incorporates visitor learning. (SAS)

Examines the kind of peer learning that demands high-level cognitive processing, discussing how peer interaction influences cognitive processes (structuring peer interaction and using guided reciprocal peer questioning); how to promote cognitive processing (knowledge construction and integration and socio- cognitive conflict); metacognition; and…

This article reviews recent empirical investigations of imagination or mental practice in highly cognitive, realistic educational domains such as mathematics or learning computer applications. While mental practice has been a standard tool in training schedules devised by sports psychologists for several decades, with its efficacy studied…

This qualitative study investigates the ability of adult low-skilled readers to talk about the thought processes and phonetic strategies they use to make decisions about their spelling. Four adult learners, all exhibiting word knowledge at a second-grade level or below, participated in individual 45-minute audiotaped interviews. Selected portions…

Personal epistemology has typically been conceptualized in one of two primary ways: as a cognitive developmental process or as a system of beliefs. The approach that is elaborated here is to conceive of epistemological understanding as a metacognitive process that activates epistemic theories, a multidimensional set of interrelated beliefs about…

This article describes the historical origins and development of a series of well-known study strategy inventories and seeks to identify their conceptual bases. The theories and evidence influencing the development of 6 contrasting instruments are considered before examining empirical evidence of similarities and differences between the…

The literature on metacognition suggests that having students practice metacognitive monitoring consistently should lead to significant improvement over time. In this study, students practiced metacognitive monitoring through the course of a full semester. The authors then examined changes in monitoring accuracy, judgment bias, and their…

This study aimed at investigating the contribution of motivational beliefs, cognitive, and metacognitive strategy use to Turkish high school students' achievement in biology. In order to investigate the specified purpose of the study, 519 tenth-grade students were administered the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (Pintrich, Smith,…

One of the most controversial issues in foreign language (FL) teaching is the age at which language learning should start. Nowadays it is recognized that in second language contexts maturational constraints make an early start advisable, but there is still disagreement regarding the problem of when to start or the best way to learn in foreign…

Geographical Education has been charged with a major responsibility for "delivering" Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and Global Citizenship (GC) in the UK (DfEE & QCA, 1999; Grimwade et al., 2000) and, as this journal demonstrates, geography has an important role internationally (Haubrich, 2000; Houtsonen, 2002; Lidstone & Stoltman,…

In this paper it is argued that the characterization of mathematical justifications as inductive or deductive is incomplete. Promoting in classrooms the development of and discourse about a third type of reasoning, transformational reasoning, which considers the results of operations on a set of objects, may contribute to mathematics learning in…

The following papers (with authors and respondents) were presented at the annual conference of the South Atlantic Philosophy of Education Society: (1) "Teaching Critical Thinking through the Disciplines: Content Versus Process" (John E. McPeck) Respondent--Kingsley Price; (2) "Philosophy for Children and the Critical Thinking Movement" (Robert J.…