Rodney R. Cocking - Böcker

Planning is an important human ability that guides behaviour and thereby complements instinctual fixed action patterns. How do people learn to plan? How do they develop the various skills that are implied by planfulness? This volume explores these questions as well as the concept of planning and its relationships to the concepts of problem-solving and organizational skills. The editors of this volume have drawn upon an international cadre of scholars to discuss the issues of planning and planful behaviours from a broad range of perspectives. The volume offers a comprehensive review and critical analysis of research and theory on the development of planning ability. Cognitive and developmental psychologists, educational researchers, and students hitherto frustrated by the complexity of the thinking about planning and fragmentation of the literature will find Blueprints for Thinking an invaluable resource.

Planning is an important human ability that guides behaviour and thereby complements instinctual fixed action patterns. How do people learn to plan? How do they develop the various skills that are implied by planfulness? This volume explores these questions as well as the concept of planning and its relationships to the concepts of problem-solving and organizational skills. The editors of this volume have drawn upon an international cadre of scholars to discuss the issues of planning and planful behaviours from a broad range of perspectives. The volume offers a comprehensive review and critical analysis of research and theory on the development of planning ability. Cognitive and developmental psychologists, educational researchers, and students hitherto frustrated by the complexity of the thinking about planning and fragmentation of the literature will find Blueprints for Thinking an invaluable resource.

The official school drop-out figure in the US in recent years has been 25 per cent of the cohort. Estimates from large cities are often double these rates, and in some areas 60 per cent or worse. This text focuses on this problem in US schools, but from an unusual perspective. It is a study gained from in-depth interviews of 100 "stop-outs" - that is, those who dropped out but then decided to return to school. Four basic questions are posed by this text: who drops out?; why did they drop out?; what caused them to return?; and what intervention policies can be formulated to prevent students dropping out in the first place? The answers provided by this text for the last question are intended to make it of particular interest to school administrators.

One of the paradoxes in developmental theory is the child's simultaneous intrapsychic and interpsychic development. While the child is growing in mental capacity and struggling to define self, behaviors are also being learned whose function is to integrate self into a social network, which often means that egocentric behaviors are in conflict with sociocentric ones. This theory draws upon processes that promote both individual and social growth into a unified theory of development. A construct pertinent to almost all dimensions of psychological research, psychological distance is conceptualized as either the distance between what the learner understands and what still has to be understood (intrapsychic), or ways in which others adjust information for the learner in order to be fully comprehended (interpsychic). Psychological distance appears to serve both organizing and explanatory functions across seemingly diverse sets of theoretical and research questions, such as differentiation of self in personality development; conceptual representation in cognitive development; dialogue in the development of communication skills; information processing in cognitive science; regulatory mechanisms in the growth of control processes; and concept formation in cross-over areas of cognition, learning and thinking skills. This volume is based on papers presented as part of the Invitational Conference honoring Irving E. Sigel, Distinguished Research Scientist, at Educational Testing Service. In each of the chapters different models are utilized to account for the construct of psychological distance, and as such, to suggest extensions of Sigel's seminal work in this area. Together, these contributions form the basis of a discussion of psychological distance as a developmental construct -- a construct which permits serious consideration of individual differences as a function of both the process and the product of cognition and ecology.

This book constitutes the first time in the field of developmental psychology that cross-cultural roots of minority child development have been studied in their ancestral societies in a systematic way--and by an international group of researchers. Most child development and child psychology texts take cultural diversity in development into account only as an addendum or as a special case--it is not integrated into a comprehensive theory or model of development. The purpose of this text is to redress this situation by enlisting insiders' and outsiders' perspectives on socialization and development in a diverse sampling of the world's cultures, including developing regions that often lack the means to speak for themselves in the arena of international social science. The unique feature of this text is the paradigm. For the minority groups represented, the questions focused on how development was behaviorally expressed within the culture of origin and in new societal contexts. Thus, developmental issues--such as language and mother-child interactions--for African-American children are considered in the United States as well as in the African culture of origin and in France as a country of immigration. This paradigm is considered for African and Asian cultures and the Americas, including Hispanics from Mexico as well as Native Americans. Specific questions posed consider the extent to which: * the development and socialization of minority children can be seen as continuous with their ancestral cultures; * the cultural and political conditions in the United States, Canada, and France have modified developmental and socialization processes, yielding discontinuities with ancestral cultures; * the ancestral cultures have changed, yielding cross-generational discontinuities in the development and socialization of immigrants from the very same countries. * the role of interdependence and independence in developmental scripts can account for historical continuities and discontinuities in development and socialization, both across and within cultures. These questions not only provide the unifying theme of this unique book but also a model for conceptualizing multi-culturalism within a unified framework for developmental psychology.

This book constitutes the first time in the field of developmental psychology that cross-cultural roots of minority child development have been studied in their ancestral societies in a systematic way--and by an international group of researchers. Most child development and child psychology texts take cultural diversity in development into account only as an addendum or as a special case--it is not integrated into a comprehensive theory or model of development. The purpose of this text is to redress this situation by enlisting insiders' and outsiders' perspectives on socialization and development in a diverse sampling of the world's cultures, including developing regions that often lack the means to speak for themselves in the arena of international social science. The unique feature of this text is the paradigm. For the minority groups represented, the questions focused on how development was behaviorally expressed within the culture of origin and in new societal contexts. Thus, developmental issues--such as language and mother-child interactions--for African-American children are considered in the United States as well as in the African culture of origin and in France as a country of immigration. This paradigm is considered for African and Asian cultures and the Americas, including Hispanics from Mexico as well as Native Americans. Specific questions posed consider the extent to which: * the development and socialization of minority children can be seen as continuous with their ancestral cultures; * the cultural and political conditions in the United States, Canada, and France have modified developmental and socialization processes, yielding discontinuities with ancestral cultures; * the ancestral cultures have changed, yielding cross-generational discontinuities in the development and socialization of immigrants from the very same countries. * the role of interdependence and independence in developmental scripts can account for historical continuities and discontinuities in development and socialization, both across and within cultures. These questions not only provide the unifying theme of this unique book but also a model for conceptualizing multi-culturalism within a unified framework for developmental psychology.

The combined impact of linguistic, cultural, educational and cognitive factors on mathematics learning is considered in this unique book. By uniting the diverse research models and perspectives of these fields, the contributors describe how language and cognitive factors can influence mathematical learning, thinking and problem solving. The authors contend that cognitive skills are heavily dependent upon linguistic skills and both are critical to the representational knowledge intimately linked to school achievement in mathematics.

One of the paradoxes in developmental theory is the child's simultaneous intrapsychic and interpsychic development. While the child is growing in mental capacity and struggling to define self, behaviors are also being learned whose function is to integrate self into a social network, which often means that egocentric behaviors are in conflict with sociocentric ones. This theory draws upon processes that promote both individual and social growth into a unified theory of development. A construct pertinent to almost all dimensions of psychological research, psychological distance is conceptualized as either the distance between what the learner understands and what still has to be understood (intrapsychic), or ways in which others adjust information for the learner in order to be fully comprehended (interpsychic). Psychological distance appears to serve both organizing and explanatory functions across seemingly diverse sets of theoretical and research questions, such as differentiation of self in personality development; conceptual representation in cognitive development; dialogue in the development of communication skills; information processing in cognitive science; regulatory mechanisms in the growth of control processes; and concept formation in cross-over areas of cognition, learning and thinking skills. This volume is based on papers presented as part of the Invitational Conference honoring Irving E. Sigel, Distinguished Research Scientist, at Educational Testing Service. In each of the chapters different models are utilized to account for the construct of psychological distance, and as such, to suggest extensions of Sigel's seminal work in this area. Together, these contributions form the basis of a discussion of psychological distance as a developmental construct -- a construct which permits serious consideration of individual differences as a function of both the process and the product of cognition and ecology.

Cross-Cultural Roots of Minority Child Development was the first volume to analyze minority child development by comparing minority children to children in their ancestral countries, rather than to children in the host culture. It was a ground-breaking volume that not only offered an historical reconstruction of the cross-cultural roots of minority child development, but a new cultural-historical approach to developmental psychology as well. It was also one of the best attempts to develop guidelines for building models of development that are multicultural in perspective, thus challenging scholars across the behavioral sciences to give more credence to the impact of culture on development and socialization in their respective fields of work.A true classic, Cross-Cultural Roots of Minority Child Development will remain an essential resource for any scholar who is interested in minority child development and engages in cross-cultural research and multidisciplinary methodologies.