published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

<p>The primordial purpose of our studies has been carrying out a detailed research to describe methods or work procedures in the teaching and application of the mathematics, at a school based or alignment on the mathematics instruction. To be able to study the pupils in their development of the mathematical thinking.</p><p>We have carried out a detailed investigation, in the previously mentioned school using the ethnography observation methods directly in the place of the facts. Where it was possible to verify that the mathematics lessons were a consequences of the methods or work procedures which made us deduce that this school did every possible effort to stimulate all the pupils to be better and particularly talented pupils individually to develop one’s talent by means of the following results:</p><p>· Develop the logical thinking</p><p>· The self-critical ability</p><p>· The attitude of the teacher/communication</p><p>· A positive work atmosphere</p><p>· Organization of the school and the class</p><p>· Formation of the theoretical knowledge</p><p>Keywords</p><p>Mathematical thinking.</p><p>Pupils</p><p>Independent school</p>

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The purpose of this study was to determine whether the direct instruction and guided practice of question-generating as a thinking skill was an influence on students' higher-level thinking skills. Additionally, this study investigated the levels of questions generated by the students throughout the five week study. Thirty sixth grade students in a Southwestern urban public elementary school were instructed daily in the use of Bloom's taxonomy as a guide in designing and composing questions. Higher levels of the taxonomy were emphasized for higher-level question generating (analysis, synthesis, and evaluation). A pre- and posttest measuring cognitive abilities was given to determine the level of the students' higher-level thinking skills. Scores were analyzed to determine the influence of the treatment. A significance difference was found between means by use of a t-test for correlated samples. Student questions generated throughout the study were coded according to Bloom's taxonomy levels by independent coders with a reliability of .93. Qualitative matrices were developed to display the levels, numbers, and percentages of the questions generated. A significant increase of higher-level questions were generated between week one (3.8%) and week five (80.5%). A shift occurred in the fourth week, with a higher percentage (61.7) of higher-level questions generated than lower-level (38.3). The results indicate support for the proposition that the direct instruction and guided practice in question generating as a thinking skill influenced students' higher-level thinking skills. The analysis of the question levels suggest support for recommendation that autonomy follows with mastery of instruction and guided practice in the thinking skill before using that skill in a new content area. Guided practice in this study was in the familiar content area of reading.

Results from curriculum enactment and sociolinguistic research have indicated that lessons are composed of information exchanges consisting of mostly facts and procedures that place little cognitive demand on students. Scholars from these areas have ascribed the characteristics of the school, teacher, student, management and task demands, or linguistic, and/or social context as explanations for those observations. They have not made a direct connection between how teachers and students decide who takes responsibility for providing the intellectual content of lessons and how that decision affects the students' higher order contributions. Consequently, the present study was designed to examine the way teachers and students cooperated for effective information exchanges and how that cooperative effort influenced students' higher order contributions. One hundred twelve chemistry and mathematics tutorials formed the data. The volunteer tutors possessed extensive training in their subject areas and the problems for discussion were designed to make high cognitive demands on the volunteer students. Methods from discourse analysis were used to develop an analytical model to identify, describe, and compare how the tutors and students exchanged information. The model was applied to the data to provide information on the following topics; the roles of the tutor and student, the substance of the exchanges, and the use of mediation strategies. Next, a code of conduct known as Grice's (1975) theory of conversational implicature was used to interpret the results of the analysis. The aim was to link conversational cooperation with students' higher order contributions to the discourse. First, the results indicated a model can be developed to describe, compare, and categorize instructional conversations. Second, tutors and students cooperate to maintain their roles during instruction and mediation strategies support those roles. Third, tutors and students intuitively follow Grice's (1975) conversational code of conduct to support their roles during their information exchanges. This cooperative effort is rooted in the conditions for conversational implicature. It was found when teachers and students explicitly negotiate and accept new intellectual roles before instruction (the conditions for implicature), higher order thinking can be encouraged by teachers and contributed by students to instructional conversations.

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No description available.

Winnicott’s (1968, 1993) play technique squiggling was piloted as a measure of creative thinking abilities and a potential diagnostic aid in the assessment of Asperger syndrome. The internal consistency and inter-rater reliability of squiggling was found to be acceptable. Mixed results were found between the six subscales in terms of concurrent validity with the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT: Torrance, Bal & Safter, 2008). Squiggling subscales Elaboration and Imagination showed signs of psychometric strength. However, Fluency and Originality require revision. Concurrent validity of the subscales Flexibility and Integration were not established. A matched-participants design enabled testing of hypothesised differences in creative thinking abilities with children with Asperger syndrome using the TTCT (Torrance et al., 2008): Abstractedness, Fluency, Originality, Integration, Elaboration, Resistance to Premature Foreclosure and Flexibility. Children with Asperger syndrome demonstrated a significantly higher level of elaboration and abstract imagination in their drawings relative to a comparison group of typically-developing children matched on age, visual motor integration ability and non-verbal IQ. Findings indicate partial support for the Weak Central Coherence Theory (Shah and Frith, 1983) and Leslie’s (1987) Meta-Representational Deficit hypothesis. Children with Asperger syndrome demonstrated understanding and expression of abstract concepts as graphical representations, thereby supporting their use in clinical assessments and interventions. No support was found for the Executive Dysfunction Theory (Pennington & Ozonoff, 1996) or for the Hyper-Systemising Theory (Baron-Cohen, 2006). Some limitations include the heterogeneity of the clinical group, and the possible confounding effects of verbal intellectual abilities, extrinsic rewards and performance anxiety. Major strengths of the study include a successful matching procedure and the finding of group differences with large effect sizes on particular creative thinking abilities.

According to economic rational choice theory greater choice will deliver well-being by increasing the likelihood that individuals satisfy personal preferences (Mas-Colell, Whinston, & Green, 1995). Consequently, extensive choice has become a fundamental aspect of both consumer markets and public policy (Schwartz, 2000; 2004; Botti & Iyengar, 2006). Crucially however, recent psychological research has begun to challenge the assumption that more choice leads to greater well-being. In several instances evidence has been found that whilst some choice is good, more choice can lead to reduced post-decisional satisfaction (e.g. Iyengar & Lepper, 2000; Shar & Wolford, 2007; Reutskaja & Hogarth, 2009). This is referred to as the Excess Choice Effect (ECE). If widespread, this ECE may mean that policies aimed at increasing well-being via choice actually deliver the opposite of their objectives. Although subject to much theoretical speculation, surprisingly little is known about the underlying cause of this effect. In light of this lacuna, the main aim of the current thesis was to investigate an alternative explanation for the ECE – namely, increased counterfactual thought. Across 7 experiments various factors known to influence the availability of counterfactual thoughts were manipulated, and the impact upon the prevalence of the ECE was explored, whilst another experiment (Experiment 7) aimed to determine individuals’ predicted affective responses to extensive choice. Overall, evidence was found that counterfactual thinking appears to play an important role in driving the dissatisfaction often associated with extensive choice. Specifically, the ECE was found to be most prevalent where counterfactual alternatives were made readily available, for example when under low cognitive load, when reflecting upon a recent, real-life decision, and when choice outcomes were negative. Further, in Experiment’s 1, 5, 6, and 8 these ECE’s were found to be significantly mediated by increased counterfactual thought, or the heightened experience of counterfactual emotion, following extensive choice. No evidence for any impact of choice level upon (psychological) satisfaction levels was found when the capacity to think counterfactually was reduced, i.e. via high cognitive load, over time, when reflecting upon a hypothetical scenario, or following a positive choice outcome. Ideas for future research are considered, and the potential implications of these findings for our theoretical understanding of the ECE, for the psychology of choice, for consumer well-being, retailers and the construction of public policy are discussed.

This thesis presents possibilities of meaning and communication in the light of the deconstructive thinking of Jacques Derrida. The central claim of the thesis is that meaning and communication are not only possible in deconstructive thinking but that their complex and contradictory relationship with one another is at the heart of that thinking. Deconstruction will be posited as an applied understanding of the generative (that is, lived) processes of meaning and communication. Deconstruction, the thesis argues, is not, as has hitherto been suggested, a process which undermines or negates the possibility of meaning or communication. Rather, the thesis concludes that provisional possibilities of meaning are contextually resigned acts of faith, whilst faith in the impossibility of future communication is the sense of faith. Where meaning stops and communication begins is where deconstruction's faith in impossibility makes that future possible. The thesis highlights six specific contexts within which meaning and communication are provisionally and generatively explored: Derrida's writing on meaning and communication; Derrida and Jean-Luc Nancy's meaningful and communicative congruities; S0ren Kierkegaard's impossible marriages; John Cowper Powys's 'marriage'; the 'realities within reality' of the 'Stonehenge' chapter of Powys's A Glastonbury Romance; and, the author's own conceptions of 'act of faith' and 'sense of faith' employed in line with the previous contexts read through John Llewelyn's 'imagination'. These six contexts are underpinned by five principal questions: what is communication? what is meaning? who or what communicates? who or what means? and, where does meaning stop and communication begin?