Despite the critical importance of maintaining a valid and transparent selection process that serves the values held by all stakeholders involved in medical education (i.e., students, faculty, society), there continue to be problems with the current state of available admissions protocols. Some problems derive from inertia induced by inaccurate…

Its proponents argue that the important cognitive effect of service-learning is increasing political knowledge. In this article, I enumerate additional skills of political thinking relevant to a civically engaged service-learning curriculum in political science. These skills include helping students: 1) develop interest in politics, 2) learn what…

Currently, there has been substantial interest, in Australia and internationally, in policy activities related to outcomes-based educational performance indicators and their link with growing demands for accountability of teachers and schools. In order to achieve a fair comparison between schools, it is commonly agreed that a correction should be…

Whether judgments made by complete strangers as to the intelligence of subjects are accurate or merely illusory was studied in Germany. Target subjects were 50 female and 50 male adults recruited through a newspaper article. Eighteen judges, who did not know the subjects, were recruited from a university community. Videorecordings of the subjects,…

This essay emphasizes a need for broad-minded constructivism which posits that individuals have coherent ways of understanding their world and that these understandings are structured and hierarchically organized. The meaning behind the term "co-construction," used in psychology, anthropology, sociology, and other disciplines, is…

Moral development is viewed as a matter of progression in the cognitive reasoning and rationale underlying choices and judgments. Traditionally, retrospective reports of rationales have been used to measure moral development levels, resulting in unreliable information. Information Integration Theory attempts to assess individual differences in…

The psychology of personality has always attempted to define the individual in relation to normative data. However, personality theory should be attempting to define individuals from an interactive measurement model, examining the individual in terms of his own subjective impressions about what he does, with a conception of what he does not do.…

Research on teacher thinking has established a place for itself within the international educational research enterprise. What is not so clear is how studies of teacher thinking may be of use in improving the quality of teacher preparation programs. This paper promotes a consultant role for researchers on teacher thinking in relation to teacher…

Teachers' knowledge and understanding of classrooms is perceived in this study in terms of interpretation of non-verbal and situational cues. Two sets of videotapes of classroom episodes were prepared, one in Hebrew and one in Dutch. These tapes were viewed by Israeli and Dutch teachers in cross-cultural settings. Teachers responded in writing and…

Designed for community college social science instructors, this compilation of materials provides an overview of the literature on critical thinking. Following introductory comments, ideas are presented concerning the importance of teaching critical thinking, the conflicting opinions about the essence of critical thinking, the pros and cons of…

This book presents six alternative teacher evaluation approaches in six chapters. Each contributor was directed to respond to an identical stage-setting stimulus; then the chapter was immediately relayed to a public school practitioner who was asked to supply a "from-the-field" reaction. The reactions follow each chapter under the heading, "From…

The process of introducing students to alternative approaches and giving them the opportunity to debate their views about a work in order to develop critical thinking skills can start in the elementary school grades. George Hillocks' seven-level hierarchy represents an appropriate scheme by which teachers can sequentially move students to higher…

A number of laboratory studies have addressed the question of how people integrate different pieces of information to form an overall evaluative judgment. Models of information integration, i.e., the adding model and the averaging model, were tested by gathering questionnaire data from 233 respondents in 17 groups who were expected to vary in…

This paper develops a comprehensive and coordinated strategy for teaching critical reading and rational decision-making skills to college students. Five skills are identified as essential for developing sound reasoning processes: (1) developing an objective viewpoint, (2) identifying and clarifying an evaluative statement--the difference between…

Sixty-five female undergraduate students who were either standing or reclining listened to a tape-recorded counterattitudinal speech containing either strong or weak arguments. Their evaluations revealed a significant interaction between posture (standing or reclining) and quality of arguments (strong or weak) on a measure of attitude change.…