Sidney Strauss

Teaching as a natural cognition and its relations to preschoolers’ developing theory of mind

Abstract Teaching is an important aspect in people’s lives and cultures. We explore it from a cognitive-developmental perspective. Teaching may be a natural cognition that, despite its complexity, is learned at an early age without any apparent instruction. We propose that theory of mind may be an important cognitive prerequisite for teaching. We briefly describe a study that tested relations between children’s developing theory of mind and actual teaching. Children at the ages of 3- and 5-years were presented new theory of mind tasks about teaching and then were observed teaching peers a game they had just learned. We found corresponding age-related differences in children’s understanding of teaching as manifested in their performance on the teaching-theory of mind tasks and in their teaching strategies. It is suggested that theory and research on theory of mind might need to be expanded to include on-line, interactive situations such as teaching.

Inducing cognitive development and learning: A review of short-term training experiments I. The organismic developmental approach ☆

Abstract The author reviewed and interpreted the literature of experimental studies whose purposes were to determine rules of generation that transform a childs cognitive organization at one stage of development into that of the next, more advanced stage. The categories of the research methodology were consistent with the organismic-developmental approach, and the findings of the studies tended to support most of the hypotheses generated from this approach. Some unresolved theoretical and methodological issues were presented, and research strategies to shed light on these issues were proposed.

Cognitive development in school and out

The contributors to this issue were given the charge to reflect on their own work and to suggest where main outcomer and theoretical breakthroughs in the area of cognitionawill be coming in the next decade. I have broadly taken this to mean discussing where my work will be heading in the next number of years. In my own egocentric way what I will be writing here has to do with orie direction I think my area ought to go; in the process I will reflect on problems that have arisen in my work that I think have soms generality. Given space limitations, I will only be able to present here: (1) 2 single question that strikes me as important for my field, (2) a brief anaJysis of various approaches that can be used to inform it, and (3) an ever. tziefer statement about a general problem besetting the study of cognition. Before getting on with the above, I must state at the out:+ that my field is what might be called applied cognitive developrmental psychology. The area in which my cognitive developniental work is applied is educarion and my concerns and the problems I investigate are always chosen with an eye towards their importance for educ&ional theory and practice. Before the reader deci.des to turn to the next article, I would like to note that although there are vzry few people who would define their field in this way, and despite the fact that it sounds like a very narrow intersect of several areas with-, out an essence of its own, it is my conviction that the area I am about to describe strikes at ihe deepest roots of the ways we represent what it is that we know and the ways that these representations can conflict with each other -and in so doing lead to cognitive development. The placement of these representations in the spectrum of epistemological issues related to common sense knowledge through knowledge that has a cultural history, as in the case of scientific and mathematical. knowledge, is a central goal of my work. It has intrigued me that we seem to represent our knowledge in different languages or notations (for lack of better words) and that these notations seem to influence how we think about various problems. One of the ques-

Relations Between Teachers' Subject Matter Knowledge, Teaching Experience and their Mental Models of Children's Minds and Learning.

We studied the relations between teachers’ subject matter knowledge (SMK), teaching experience and espoused mental models (MMs) about children’s learning. The SMK we tested was wh-constructions in English. Teachers were classified on a Subject Matter Task, to have high or low SMK. They were then interviewed to determine the nature of their espoused MM of children’s learning. A total of 32 teachers were divided into 4 groups of 8 teachers each: SMK (high and low) and teaching experience (experienced and novice teachers). The findings were that despite their differences in SMK and teaching experience, the teachers had identical espoused MMs of children’s learning. These data support the notion that teachers’ espoused MMs have priority over their SMK.

Appearance, reality, and identity

Abstract The five-year-olds conception of the appearance, reality, and identity of physical objects was investigated. These concepts are not coextensive in the structure of the young childs cognition. Nor are his identity concepts of conservation the cognitive products of his knowledge about appearance and reality. Indeed, his conservation concepts tend to outstrip his judgments about appearance and reality. Moreover, training the child to more correctly distinguish between appearance and reality does not generally affect his conceptions of conservation.

The development of children's concepts of death

Abstract This study had three purposes. The first was to construct a reliable test to assess childrens concepts of death. Such a test was devised and was found to be reliable. The second purpose was to assess the development of childrens understandings of subconcepts of the concept of death (cessation, necessity, irreversibility, causality, and university) for different content (humans and animals). The findings were: More younger than older children correctly judges tasks measuring these subconcepts, some of the subconcepts were more difficult than others, and there were no differences between childrens understanding of these subconcepts for humans and animals. The third purpose was to find two kinds of developmental sequences. The first was development between the subconcepts. Two sequences were predicted based on an analysis of prerequisite relations: One of these was found in part, and the other was within a subconcept. It was found that children believe that in death there is cessation of external...

The influence of training for the atomistic schema on the development of the density concept among gifted and nongifted children

Abstract The present study was conducted for two purposes. The first was to test the relations between the schema of atomism and the concept of density, and to examine the effects of Piagetian stage and M-capacity on these relations. This was accomplished by giving training for the schema of atomism to children at different stages and with varying M- capacities. The second purpose was to test the effects of age (9–10 versus 11–12 years) and IQ (gifted versus nongified children) as variables that would influence the outcome of training. A total of 120 children were tested. The findings were that the effects of the training and the IQ variables were significant while the effect of the age variable was not. When stage and M-capacity were covaried the effects of training and IQ remained significant. Implications for issues of developmental theory and educational practice are discussed.

Relations between the Development of Teaching and Theory of Mind in Early Childhood.

The relations among children’s theory of mind (ToM), their understanding of the intentionality of teaching, and their own peer teaching strategies were tested. Seventy-five 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds completed 11 ToM and understanding-of-teaching tasks. Subsequently, 30 of the children were randomly chosen to teach a peer how to play a board game, and their teaching strategies and levels of contingent teaching were recorded. There were developmental changes in the children’s understanding of teaching as an intentional activity. When teaching their peers, 3-year-olds used demonstration, whereas 4- and 5-year-olds added verbal explanations and began to adapt contingently to the learners’ changing knowledge level. Relations among ToM, understanding of teaching, and teaching level were found. The results suggest that the development of children’s teaching strategies and their contingency are closely tied to the development of ToM.

Relations Between Teachers’ Subject Matter Knowledge About Written Language and their Mental Models About Children’s Learning

The purpose of our work reported in this chapter is to shed light on the nature of the relations between teachers’ subject matter knowledge (SMK) and their understanding of how children learn that subject matter. The main thesis we present here is that teachers’ levels of SMK do not influence their understandings of children’s learning. This thesis runs counter to both common sense and the research literature.

Intellectual development of deaf children in different educational environments

Abstract Deaf children at three age levels in a school only for the deaf were compared with their deaf and hearing peers in a school for both deaf and hearing children on two Piagetian tasks assessing mental development. Segregated deaf lagged behind integrated deaf children, whereas no differences were found between integrated deaf and hearing children. These findings were discussed in terms of their relevance for assessing: (1) educational influences on mental development, and (2) the relationship between intellectual (operational) and linguistic (figurative) development.