First published in 1983. The essays in this book are based on papers presented at a symposium held in March 1976 at the Learning and Development Center (LRDC), University of Pittsburgh. It was planned to serve three purposes: to pay tribute to retiring chairman Ralph W. Tyler, to mark the dedication of LRDC's new buiding and to provide an opportunity for those involved in research and development to reflect further on its implications for school change.

The contributors to this volume address reasoning and problem solving as fundamental to learning and teaching and to modern literacy. The research on expertise and the development of competence makes it clear that structures of knowledge and cognitive process should be tightly linked throughout education to attain high levels of ability. The longstanding pedagogical assumption that the attainment of useful knowledge proceeds from lower level learning based on the practice of fundamental sk...

An adjunct to the increased emphasis on developing students' critical thinking and higher order skills is the need for methods to monitor and evaluate these abilities. These papers provide insight into current techniques and examine possibilities for the future. The contributors to Diagnostic Monitoring of Skill and Knowledge Acquisition focus on two beliefs: that new kinds of tests and assessment methods are needed; and that instruction and learning can be improved by developing ...

Due largely to developments made in artificial intelligence and cognitive psychology during the past two decades, expertise has become an important subject for scholarly investigations. The Nature of Expertise displays the variety of domains and human activities to which the study of expertise has been applied, and reflects growing attention on learning and the acquisition of expertise. Applying approaches influenced by such disciplines as cognitive psychology, artificial intellig...

Investigators have moved back and forth between design efforts and basic studies in cognition to improve both application and fundamental knowledge. This volume's theme is this interaction between practice and science with the opportunity for reflecting on findings in order to understand them and suggesting improved forms of application and their underlying explanation. This is seen in various arenas including theory-based computer-assisted instruction for teaching mathematics, the design ...

This volume documents the growth of a new kind of interdisciplinary teamwork that is evolving among practitioners, researchers, teacher educators, and community partners. Its premise: the design of learning environments and the development of theory must proceed in a mutually supportive fashion. Scientific researchers have learned that a prerequisite to studying the kinds of learning that matter is helping to shoulder the responsibility for ensuring that these forms of learning occur. To s...

The chapters in this collection illustrate how current concepts and principles from various disciplines can be viewed from the perspective of their value to educational process thinking. While not providing specific prescriptions for educational problems, the articles provide relevant experimental and theoretical knowledge has accumulated in many fields including learning theory, cognitive development, motivation, and intellectual abilities and attitudes.

In recent years, the use of technology for the purposes of improving and enriching traditional instructional practices has received a great deal of attention. However, few works have explicitly examined cognitive, psychological, and educational principles on which technology-supported learning environments are based. This volume attempts to cover the need for a thorough theoretical analysis and discussion of the principles of system design that underlie the construction of technology-enhan...