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.     

Children’s reactions to failure: Implications for education

European Journal of Psychology of Education -     

THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY: ETV IN AN AUSTRALIAN COLLEGE

This paper is a case‐study of the development of educational television in a college of advanced education in Australia. It describes the key decisions in that development, and explores the significant variables which affected them, including both pragmatic factors, such as the availability of equipment and finance, and the skills and preferences of the people involved, and theoretical factors, such as the way in which certain attributes of the media interact with the individual differences of learners to effect particular types of learning

Implicit in the discussion is a number of philosophical questions, to do with the relationship between science and technology, with the notion of science and research, and with the nature and power of the human mind     

The effects of test anxiety on learning at superficial and deep levels of processing

The effect of test anxiety on learning superficial and deep level tasks was examined. Ninety college students classified as either high or low test-anxious learned a paired-associate word list using either a superficial level or a deep level processing strategy. The results indicated that on the superficial level processing task, the performance of the low test-anxious students was not significantly different from that of the high test-anxious students, while on the deep level processing task the performance of the low test-anxious students was significantly better than the performance of the high test-anxious students. The results are discussed in the context of a cognitive-attentional theory of test anxiety and the mechanisms by which test anxiety may disrupt performance.