Semiotics is the science of signs and the structures of signs within which meanings emerge. The process through which these sign structures are built up is called semiosis. Courses commonly taught as foundational to teacher trainers should be imbued with a specific semiotic emphasis. At a general level, teachers may be introduced to the notion of…

Preservice elementary teachers' use of examples in recognizing and disproving invalid deductive arguments related to topics in elementary school mathematics was examined. Two forms of the Classroom Logic Test were developed, one multiple choice and one free response. Subjects were asked to judge the correctness of arguments and, if incorrect,…

This study examined the relationships among presentational stimuli (oral, visual, oral plus visual), types of content (concrete, abstract), and learner ability (high verbal, low verbal). Third grade students either heard a short story, watched pictures showing the same short story, or heard and watched a combination of the oral and picture…

At the College of Saint Theresa (Minnesota), the efficacy of preparing qualified teachers in four years is supported through three years of activities in conjunction with a Dean's Grant Project. Project PRISE (Preparing Regulars in Special Education) is based on two themes: (1) Teacher education graduates should be able to use reasoning skills to…

This study investigates the training of inner-city first and second graders in Piagetian classification skills. Twenty boys and 20 girls were pretested for necessary baseline knowledge and were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. Both groups were given training programs intended to assist the children in developing classification…

The effects of self-oriented and other-oriented questions on moral reasoning scores for two moral dilemmas involving stealing and school cheating were investigated. The reasoning scores of elementary school-aged children increased on other-oriented questions by the fifth grade. Females' scores showed consistent reasoning on self-oriented and…

This study sought to determine the basis for young children's understanding of fundamental addition and subtraction processes, and to expose any limitations on such arithmetic reasoning. Thirty-six two-year-olds and 36 three-year-olds participated in six experiments which examined children's relational quantity judgments about pairs of arrays in…

The guide contains six episodes, suitable for the secondary level, designed to focus attention on the moral issues involved in war. It is presented in two sections. Section I discusses four objectives of values education and how the suggested activities contribute to their attainment. These objectives are: (1) differentiating value judgments,…

Two influential theories of intellectual development are reviewed and analyzed: the psychometric framework, based on the factorial composition of intelligence, and the Piagetian model, based on assimilation and accomodation through four stages of intellectual development. A third concept is the componential theory of intelligence, based on…

About 25 children in each of grades 3, 5, 7, 9, and 11 were tested in their ability to solve linear syllogisms, such as: John is taller than Mary. Mary is taller than Pete. Who is tallest--John, Mary, or Pete? Response latencies and error rates decreased across grade levels and sessions. Component latencies also generally decreased with increasing…

Empirical research is reviewed in the area of cognitive psychology pertaining to models of human memory. Research evidence and theoretical considerations are combined to develop guidelines for future theory development related to the human memory. The following theoretical constructs and variables are discussed: (1) storage versus process…

The purpose of this study was threefold: to determine whether adding a mnemonic to systematically designed instruction would improve verbal retention, to establish whether retention is better for concrete or abstract information, and to determine whether mental imagery or verbal elaboration is more effective for learning concrete or abstract…

In long established research organizations, it is necessary to safeguard good research ideas originating at lower organizational levels. The upward progress of unusually good ideas in an organizational hierarchy may be compared with that of ordinary ideas by means of a mathematical model, with the assumption that ideas follow a Poisson…

Evaluated was an intervention program designed to teach reasoning skills to 13 congenitally blind students (6-18 years old). Remediation was focused on classification, conservation and abstract operations, and mental imagery development. At the conclusion of 17 months, Ss' performance was compared with that of a control group matched for age and…

College students need a learning environment that encourages them to develop their reasoning abilities, as well as to master course content. This booklet discusses an attempt to create such an environment: the ADAPT program at the University of Nebraska. ADAPT, Accent on Developing Abstract Processes of Thought, is a comprehensive,…