Whether the aim has been to understand the nature of creativity or to determine its development, researchers have formulated a number of measures of creativity. A glut of results and conclusions actually hinders an educational understanding of the term creativity. The most widely known tests of creativity incorporate divergent-thinking, as opposed…

Current writings on the functions of the left and right hemispheres of the brain are examined, focusing upon possible implications for improving present educational techniques. It has been generally accepted by researchers that the organizational and verbalizing processes are functions of the left cerebral hemisphere, while creative and intuitive…

Museum objects can be the springboard for exercising critical thinking. There are four main thought processes associated with critical thinking: (1) fluent thinking, the ability to produce many ideas; (2) flexible thinking, the ability to view something in different ways; (3) original thinking, the ability to produce unique ideas; and (4)…

This study was designed to investigate three main topics: the frequency of different kinds of questions which day care teachers asked of low-income 2-year-olds, the toddlers' rate of response to questions, and differences in questions asked of boys and girls. It was hypothesized that caregivers would ask girls more personal-social questions and…

In this study, the effects of motivational and behavioral dimensions of study behavior on objective and essay modes of evaluating course content were investigated. Several performance measures in two undergraduate Educational Psychology courses were factor analyzed, and three orthogonal performance factors were obtained: general achievement,…

Problems of a process approach to English for specific purposes courses for "convergent" academic disciplines are illustrated with an example of science instruction. Course designers must undertake task analysis of the intellectual abilities used in learning activities and relate these to the intellectual abilities of language learners. (Author/CB)

Demonstrates how to promote the transference of concepts and principles developed in other curricula to enhance a student's subject matter mastery in soil classification. Describes course format, critical thinking techniques, and a course evaluation. A conclusion and references are included. (Author/RT)

Builds a case for a careful reexamination of what it means to teach students to think critically. Briefly summarizes three noteworthy studies of higher-order thinking programs and discusses some of their fallacious assumptions. Proposes a more realistic and attainable approach to higher order thinking titled "reflective judgment." (MJP)

A central dilemma of portfolio assessment is that as the richness of the data available to readers increases, so do the challenges involved in ensuring acceptable reliability among readers. Drawing on empirical and theoretical work in discourse analysis, ethnomethodology, and other fields, we argue that this dilemma results, in part, from the fact…

Based on Bloom's Taxonomy of thought, this thematic reading comprehension unit on "loneliness" is intended for teachers of grades 7-9. The thinking process is broken into six categories: (1) recall; (2) inference; (3) application; (4) analysis; (5) synthesis; and (6) evaluation. A short description is given for each of these processes.…

This study sought information on the relationship between cognitive styles (conceptual level and field-independence/field-dependence) and entrance examination criteria of those accepted to teacher education at the University of Helsinki in 1980. The 96 subjects represented prospective class teachers and teachers of handicraft and home economics.…

Using Guilford's model, the text reviews the structure of the intellect (SOI) and its operations, contents, and products. Those operations and components are further described, including the factors of cognition, memory, evaluation, convergent-production, and divergent-production. For each factor, the figural, symbolic, and semantic dimensions are…

Introduces a collection of papers presented at a symposium on the situationally-specific character of problem-solving practices. Reports that findings provoke speculation about relations among social contexts, knowledge and activity, and relations between school-learned problem-solving techniques and those used in other settings. (KH)

Investigated male/female sixth-formers studying physical and biological science A-level courses, examining cognitive style, convergent/divergent thinking, career plans, and other characteristics. Differences between biology/physics students tend to be of the same kind as those between scientists as a whole compared to nonscientists. (JN)

Research in this project studied cognitive processes involved in understanding and solving problems used in instruction in the domain of mathematics, and explored implications of these cognitive analyses for the design of instruction. Three general issues were addressed: knowledge required for understanding problems, knowledge of the conditions…