A social learning explanation for age-related changes in children's conceptual behavior

A social learning explanation for children's conceptual development is proposed. Recent training research on conservation is discussed, and it is concluded that it fails to support three key assumptions underlying Piaget's theory (a) Children are able to learn to conserve without being “in transition,” (b) nonconservation experiences are successful in promoting developmentally immature cognitive functioning, and (c) there is evidence of inconsistencies in children's cognitive functioning across tasks assessing the same cognitive stage. Two aspects of children's conservation responding are explained according to a social learning position: decalages and the shift from perceptual cues to quantitative cues. This explanation involves consideration of cognitive factors such as prior rule learning as well as impinging social experience.     

Piaget's theory and instruction: How compatible are they?

Three views of the compatibility of Piaget's theory and educational practice are considered: (a) it is a useful framework to guide instruction; (b) it is antithetical or unrelated to the goals of instruction; and (c) there are some instructional features of the theory that can be operationalized and studied empirically. The findings of such studies are briefly discussed, and in general, more research is deemed needed to establish the validity of Piaget's most educationally relevant constructs. Some general features of Piaget's theory that have attracted teachers are described, and the implications of Piaget's more recent theoretical emphasis on social factors such as conflict are considered.     

The role of stimulus salience in young children's ability to discriminate two-dimensional rotations: Reflections on a paradigm

Children's ability to discriminate reflections and rotations of visual stimuli was examined within the confines of a mental rotation task. It was hypothesized that success would be affected by both characteristics of the stimulus and by the subtlety of the discrimination required. Forty 3- to 4-year-old children were directed to mentally rotate a stimulus a given number of degrees and to discriminate the appearance of the rotated stimulus from among a set of alternatives. Four stimuli differing in the number of visual orientation cues were utilized across 24 trials. A significant effect was found for number of orientation cues, and data indicated the difficulty children experienced detecting reflections, a task which bears close resemblance to the yes/no option in prototypic rotation studies. Children were only successful with a limited range of stimuli when discrimination of a reflected foil was not required. Results are discussed in light of discrepant findings about children's kinetic imagery ability and the advisability of using this particular paradigm with young Children.     

Four components of Rotter's internal-external scale and cheating behavior

This paper studied correlations between classroom cheating and the four subscales of Rotter's I-E scale identified by Collins. One-hundred-thirty college undergraduates completed the Rotter scale converted to 46 Likert items and a 30-item multiple-choice, introductory psychology examination under crowded classroom conditions. Cheating, as indexed by answer overlap with adjacent neighbors as compared to answer overlap with distant subjects, correlated significantly with the difficult-easy subscale but not with the other subscales, and not with the overall I-E scale. Results are taken as justification for the Collins' subscales and are discussed in terms of the multidimensional aspects of the overall I-E dimension.     

Students' reactions after cheating: An attributional analysis

The hypothesis that students who cheat will externalize the cause of this behavior was tested by contrasting the causal inferences of cheating students and noncheating students. The results supported Kelley's attributional model, for cheaters tended to note the high distinctiveness, high consensus, and low consistency of their actions, while noncheaters noted the low distinctiveness, low consensus, and high consistency of their morally commendable actions. Comparison of the students' attributions with inferences formulated by uninvolved observers also indicated that students tended to formulate self-serving attributions, suggesting that external attributions—in providing students with an excuse for cheating—may work to limit self-concept changes after misconduct.     

Individual differences in young children's recall and clustering of pictures

Children's incidental recall of pictures was examined in two related experiments. Extrapolating from adult research, it was predicted that categorizing pictures with respect to their semantic properties would yield greater recall than categorizing them according to their physical properties. In Experiment 1, second-grade children were exposed to 16 line drawings cross-classified to represent four taxonomic categories and four shape categories, with four instances per category. Control subjects simply looked at pictures. Semantic subjects identified each picture's semantic category, and Physical subjects identified each physical category. In Experiment 2, first graders freely sorted the pictures and were classified as Semantic or Physical sorters based on their predominant bases for sorting. Following exposure (Experiment 1) or sorting (Experiment 2), all subjects were asked to recall the picture names. Results of both experiments show that semantic classification yields greater recall than physical classification. Experiment 2 also shows that semantic sorting yields greater semantic clustering in recall and that sorting by physical category yields greater physical clustering. It was suggested that children's preferences for a mode of processing (Experiment 2) may constitute an individual difference dimension with fairly clear-cut instructional implications.     

The effects of effort feedback and performance patterns on children's attributions and task persistence

This study examines the effects of performance patterns (ascending versus random) and attributional information regarding the causes of that performance (effort feedback versus no feedback) on attributions and task persistence. Subjects were 40 fourth and fifth graders with dispositional tendencies not to perceive effort as a cause of their school-related performance. Results indicated that performance patterns did not systematically influence either children's attributions or persistence. As predicted, children given effort feedback exhibited greater levels of task persistence than those given no feedback; unexpectedly, however, this effect was not mediated by children's attributions.     

Differences in teachers' perceptions of personal control of positive versus negative student learning outcomes

Past research on teachers' causal attributions has shown there to be little relation between perceptions of responsibility for positive versus negative student learning outcomes. In this study, Weiner's model for causal attributions was employed to explore these perceived attributional differences. Data were gathered from 184 teachers from two metropolitan school districts. Statistically significant differences between attributions for positive versus negative outcomes were identified along the dimensions of both internality/externality and stability of cause. Relations to overall efficacy, teaching experience, grade level taught, and teacher gender were also explored; however, only grade level differences were found to be statistically significant.     

Piagetian structuralism and learning: Reflections on two decades of educational application

In light of salient measurement and evaluation issues a content analysis approach was chosen to assess the value and problem of applying Piagetian theory to early childhood education. Focal changes in implementation were analyzed with emphasis upon the so-called unique contributions of the theory to teaching goals, beliefs, understandings, and practices. Structuralism was compared favorably with learning theory in providing a conceptual basis for educational application. The inherently dialectical nature of Piaget's views of knowledge presents an intuitively appealing albeit conceptually and methodologically abstract approach to educational innovation. It was concluded that applying Piagetian theory to education, in agreement with these special developmental dynamics, involves an interactively changing theory and data base as teachers and children develop over time.     

Effects of students' race,physical attractiveness,and dialect on teachers' evaluations

The study was designed to assess the effects of a student's race, dialect, and physical attractiveness on teachers' evaluations. The students were of two races, black and white; three physical attractivenss levels, high, middle, and low; and they spoke one of two dialects, Black English or Standard English. Sixty-eight, white, elementary school teachers listened to each student's response and rated the student in terms of personality, quality of response, and current and future academic abilities. Analysis of the results showed that all main effects and interactions were significant. Generally, black students, Black English-speaking students, and low attractive students were rated lower. The results also revealed that teachers' ratings in the different areas were highly consistent with one another. Discussion centered around the results' implications for determining the cause(s) of black children's failure in school. The results provide some support for attributing these children's academic failures to their race and dialect rather than to their actual performance.     

The productivity of education and the premium for foreign degrees in LDC's

This article serves a twofold purpose. First, it provides further empirical evidence of the higher premiums for foreign degrees in LDC's: in this particular case, Malaysia. Second, it shows that the returns to higher education and the premiums for foreign degrees can be attributed principally to their superior productivity rather than the irrational behavior of employers.     

Ethnic and regional influences on teachers' evaluations of oral answers

Tape recordings were made of six white and six black ninth-grade northern boys speaking identically worded answers to typical school questions. Black students were given significantly higher grades than white students by 56 white and 50 black southern teachers. Black teachers gave significantly higher grades than white teachers, but no significant interaction was found between students' and teachers' ethnic group. The study is a partial replication of a previous study in which it was found that black students were given significantly lower grades than white students by northern white teachers.     

The economics of teachers' strikes in Minnesota in 1981

Teacher strikes occurred in 35 of Minnesota's 434 school districts in 1981, the first year under a new bargaining law. This paper examines the strikes using the difference between the last prestrike offer and the net final settlement to determine whether strikes produced economic gains for teachers. After eliminating ten strikes which emphasized non-economic issues, we found that teachers made net gains in 18 of the remaining 25 economically motivated strikes, for a success rate of 77%. The boards' last pre-strike offers in these 25 districts were only 79.1% of the state settlement average. Only two of the 35 districts made last pre-strike offers which exceeded the state average settlement. We conclude that board conduct as manifested in the last pre-strike offer was a dominant factor in strike activity and that public sector bargaining as judged by the Minnesota experience is in an early conflict stage, approximately 50 years behind the private sector. Further, our findings are consistent with observations by others that the labor markets for certified teachers are statewide rather than local.     

Children's learning as a function of variation in stimulus characteristics and motor involvement

Results of two artificial letter learning experiments are reported. In Experiment 1, 229 preschool children were randomly assigned to one of five conditions: Two-dimensional small print size (2DS), two-dimensional large print size (2DL), two-dimensional large where subject traced stimuli mounted on cards (3DL), or three-dimensional large stimuli where subject was directed to manipulate stimuli during the first study trial (3DLM). Errors in the 3DLM condition were significantly less than in 2DS, 2DLT, and 3DL. Also, errors in the 2DL condition were significantly less than in 2DS. A replication experiment with kindergarten children failed to show any differences among the treatments. Results are discussed in terms of stimulus dimensions and motor involvement in children's letter learning. Implications for instruction and future research are noted.     

Regular and special education teachers' Marking Attitudes and behavior

The Minnesota Marking Attitude Scale was administered to 33 regular education and 20 special education teachers. Results showed that regular educators believed that marks have a positive influence on students while special educators believed marks have neither a positive nor a negative influence (p < .005). Special educators believed to a greater extent than did regular educators that marks should be manipulated in order to influence student behavior (p < .05) and that different standards should be used to evaluate different students (p < .001). Teachers also marked students' written short answers to two typical school questions. No significant differences were found between the marks assigned by the two groups of teachers to either set of answers. Assigned marks, attitude scores, and years of teaching experience were not significantly correlated with each other. Results are discussed in terms of implications for mainstreaming.     

Facet design and smallest space analysis of teachers' instructional behavior

The essence of research in the behavioral sciences is to help in forming theories that will enhance understanding of behavior. In this study an attempt is made to construct such a theory of students' perceptions of their teachers' instructional behaviors and to verify it by empirical evidence. Guttman's definition of a theory was adopted here: “An hypothesis of a correspondence between a definitional system for a universe of observation and an aspect of the empirical structure of those observations, together with a rationale for such an hypothesis” (Shye, 1978). Data was collected through a questionnaire administered to two thousand highschool students. Facet design and smallest space analysis (SSA) were used to construct a theory that was then verified by empirical evidence. The results are consistent with previous studies done by Bar-On (Bar-On & Perlberg, 1976; Klinging & Bar-On, 1975) which employed also facet design and smallest space analysis.     

What do tests of “formal” reasoning actually measure?

Tests of formal operational reasoning derived from Piagetian theory have been found to be effective predictors of academic achievement. Yet Piaget's theory regarding the underlying nature of formal operations and their employment in specific contexts has run into considerable empirical difficulty. The primary purpose of this study was to present the core of an alternative theory of the nature of advanced scientific reasoning. That theory, referred to as the multiple-hypothesis theory, argues that tests of formal operational reasoning actually measure the extent to which persons have acquired the ability to initiate reasoning with more than one specific antecedent condition, or if they are unable to imagine more than one antecedent condition, they are aware that more than one is possible; therefore conclusions that are drawn are tempered by this possibility. As a test of this multiple-hypothesis theory of advanced reasoning and the contrasting Piagetian theory of formal operations, a sample of 922 college students were first classified as concrete operational, transitional, or formal operational, based upon responses to standard Piagetian measures of formal operational reasoning. They were then administered seven logic tasks. Actual response patterns to the tasks were analyzed and found to be similar to predicted response patterns derived from the multiple-hypothesis theory and were different from those predicted by Piagetian theory. Therefore, support was obtained for the multiple-hypothesis theory. The terms intuitive and reflective were suggested to replace the terms concrete operational and formal operational to refer to persons at varying levels of intellectual development.     

Understanding of proportion as embodied in the concept of fullness: An investigation into Bruner's “modes-of-representation-conflict hypothesis”

The present study replicates and extends an experiment by Bruner and Kenney (Bruner, J. S. American Psychologist, 1964, 19, 1–15; Beyond the information given, NY: Allen & Unwin, 1973;Bruner, J. S., Olver, R. R., & Greenfield, P. M. et al. (Eds.), Studies in cognitive growth, NY: Wiley, 1966). Children aged 5 to 11 were shown pairs of glasses containing water and were asked if one glass of each pair was fuller or emptier and to give the reason. Children aged 12 to 15 and adult subjects were subsequently included but asked to judge only fullness.The glasses differed in height, diameter, and water level and consequently in volume of water and volume of unfilled space, and in proportion full and proportion empty.It is shown that the Bruner experiment reveals weaknesses in design and procedure and focuses on the dichotomous sense of fullness rather than the partial dimension explored in the present study. Contrary to earlier findings the present results indicate that the child tends to think of fullness and emptiness in the same manner and that, far from the concept being mastered at age 11, it is still not completely understood in adulthood.By 11 years the child can cope with fractions and compare volumes, but at age 15 and in adulthood he is still not fully aware that he must not only estimate the volume of the container that is filled but also relate this volume to the total volume of the container and finally compare the two ratio measures obtained.The results are discussed in terms of Bruner's representation-conflict hypothesis, Clark's (Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behvaior, 1971, 10, 266–275; Semantic development in language acquisition. Paper presented at the Third Child Language Research Forum, Stanford University, 1971; Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 1972, 11, 750–758; Cognition, 1973, 2.2, 161–182; What's in a word? On the child's acquisition of semantics in his first language. In T. E. Moore (Ed.), Cognitive development and the acquisition of language. NY: Academic Press, 1973) semantic-feature theory and from a functional perspective. Follow-up research is outlined.