Despite the endorsement of problem solving by social studies educators as an important process for students to learn, research shows that most social studies teachers do not include such higher level intellectual processes in their teaching. This paper specifically deplores the lack of attention to inquiry problems. The authors suggest that social…

The paper suggests ways to coordinate basic social studies skills to achieve the goal of developing reasoning ability in elementary and secondary students. The first three sections present a rationale for teaching the reasoning process in the social studies curriculum. The author stresses that in order to be an effective thinker, one should be…

This document discusses the relation between adolescents' expertise (their informational background, which can be accurate or inaccurate, about a particular task or subject) and their formal operational reasoning, and reports the results of three studies of the effects of children's expertise on reasoning. In Study I, adolescents from a rural…

Twenty high mental age (MA) subjects and 33 low MA subjects who had been in a free word association test 30 months previously were retested with the Moran 80-Word List. At the time of the previous testing, subjects in the high group had a mean chronological age (CA) of 17.1 and mean MA of 11.5; subjects in the low group had a mean CA of 15.3 and…

If academic material is to have the same force as social and personal experience at the college level, then educators need to allow more experiences on the academic road. That experiences are becoming more important is evidenced by the emergence of competency-based programs, experimental teaching programs, cluster colleges, and experiential…

The National Instititute of Education sponsored a conference on the future of research in adolescent reasoning. This report reflects this conference discussion, which focused on: (1) the theoretical basis for research programs in the area of adolescent reasoning; (2) research programs likely to be effective in gathering information relevant to…

This booklet introduces elementary school teachers to the methodology, climate, aims, and objectives necessary for the teaching of philosophical thinking to grade schoolers. The methodology casts the teacher as a facilitator whose primary task is stimulating children to reason about their own problems. The discussion process with hints and guides…

The introductory chapter considers how the major education issues treated came to be defined and what operational processes were utilized to address the issues. Then, some observations and generalizations are made concerning the varying perspectives and approaches utilized by the authors in attacking the issues. To assist readers in relating to…

This paper presents a study which investigated the relationship between field-dependence, perceptual egocentrism, and inductive reasoning in 53 kindergarten children. The general objective of the study was to assess the validity of the field-dependence measures in early childhood. Field-dependence was found to relate positively with perceptual…

Historical incidents, photographs of sheet music, cartoons, and advertisements are employed to study language in this textbook. The text, suggestions, and quoted material in the book are to be used not only for the study of language but also as sources for writing. It is recommended that journal entries, more fresh and spontaneous than formal…

This study examines the relationship between development of a child's ability to coordinate perspective and his ability to conceptualize spatial relations on a map. One hundred and four school children from inner city, urban fringe, and suburban schools, grades K-6, were administered a Test of Coordination of Perspectives and a Test of Map…

This paper describes a visual-motor training program that has been successfully implemented with children aged 3-11. Various studies related to the development of children's visual-motor skills are reviewed and a rationale associated with the teaching of appropriate visual-motor processes is explained. Application of this rationale to the visual…

The purpose of this study was to enumerate, categorize, and compare the types of reading comprehension questions and activities included in the manuals of selected basal reading series. The Barrett Taxonomy--Cognitive and Affective Dimensions of Reading Comprehension was selected as the categorization taxonomy. Basal series were classified as…

Examines science education research studies concerned with the development of formal thinking in adolescents according to Piagetian theory. (Author/GA)

Reports a study which examined objective ratings of the moral issues expressed in the Defining Issues Test (DIT) items in relation to verbal reports of the reasoning with which those ratings were generated. Finds that differences in the educational level of the subjects were significant. A case is made for verbal assessment of information on…