It is the role of schools and colleges to teach certain truths that can enhance the quality of one's life in society. Yet often these truths are not learned at school because many students do not accept them as truths, because they are not actually included in the curriculum, or because they are mistaught. These truths revolve around eight…

This study focused on how French children aged 4, 6, and 8 years evaluate the conditions of use for modal expressions marking certainty and uncertainty in discourse. Children were shown films involving verbal interactions during which one of the protagonists produced a target utterance accusing another character of having performed a deed. Each…

This paper lends support to Richard E. Clark's position that media make no difference in student achievement, but also argues that alternative ways of thinking about media--i.e., about the differences media do make along with the differences they can make--are necessary and important. Two major areas of study are examined. In discussing the first…

This paper discusses the implications of Piaget's theory to science education. The first section of the paper, "What Science Teachers Need To Know: Scientific Knowledge and Its Source," describes three sources of students' knowledge and corresponding educational practices. The second section, "Functions of Intelligence," discusses the concept of…

The papers in this publication are, for the most part, coupled as a statement of position followed by a response. The subjects addressed cover a broad spectrum of educational philosophy. Topics chosen for presentation include: (1) basic reading instruction for hermeneutic understanding; (2) the teacher as a philospher; (3) the classroom as a…

This paper discusses four kinds of reasons for studying child language. The first of the four, biological reasons, includes the desire to understand our own species and its place among other living things in the universe. The common human faculty for communication, the variability in language building, and the similarity of human communication to…

The construction of cognitive tests is largely based on a Thurstonian model of the structure of the intellect, with test content described in terms of loadings on broad constructs called factors. Knowledge of factorial content of a test does not necessarily correspond to knowledge of mental activities elicited by test performance. Modern cognitive…

Analysis of students' interpretations of a complex episode of social interaction was used to illustrate three features of human plans that distinguish them from robot plans and that form a basis for a theory of the development of social action. The features illustrated are that (1) human plans are social, (2) human plans operate on…

Two important developments have occurred in the field of history education that have had important implications for elementary school teachers. First, our understanding of history as a discipline reflects a new understanding about the nature and purpose of history teaching. Second, we have a better understanding of the cognitive capacities of…

The cognitive learning theories of Bruner and Gagne and the developmental psychology of Piaget play a central role in the development of curriculum models and instructional strategies to better serve the needs of bilingual children or those whose native language is not English. Each theory has components that may be useful to certain stages in…

A future, automated, interactive, knowledge delivery system for use by researchers was tested using a manual cognitive model. Conceptualized from schema/frame/script theories in cognitive psychology and artificial intelligence, this hypothetical system was simulated by two psychologists who interacted with four researchers in microbiology to…

The selective learning hypothesis holds that individuals' learning of prose passages will be affected in varying ways by the passages' threatening or unpleasant content. To test this hypothesis, 19 college students read six prose passages--three containing threatening material and three nonthreatening--and then completed a cloze test for each…

Socrates' contention was that the sophist misconstrues the sphere of ethics. Although the sophist presents a systematized moral world, no experience is implied. This can be applied to the new professionalism in the teaching of ethics. Loosening the creative tension of perceived responsibility effectively closes down the real moral decision. The…

This paper presents a cross-sectional investigation of adolescents' and young adults' reflective epistemological development. Three groups of 8 subjects (4 male and female) ages 10, 14, and 18 were given Piagetian tasks, the Kohlberg moral judgment questionnaire, and an epistemology interview covering such concepts as knowledge, thought, feeling,…

Convergence of disciplines is taking place among library science, information science, communication and instructional technology. Basic competencies running throughout the information disciplines are user information and communication; information and communication technologies; and policy studies. As a result of this convergence, library science…