A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

Toward a New Science of Instruction: Programmatic Investigations in Cognitive Science and Education--August 1993

Foreword

The Office of Research in the U.S. Department of Education supports research to improve education policy and practice. The goal of our work is to illuminate those educational problems and issues that are of greatest concern to the American people. This is accomplished through basic and applied research carried out by universities, school districts, teachers, and individuals across the nation.

One of the most important areas we have funded in recent years is the intersection between sound basic research and the actual practices of classroom teachers. The cognitive processes involved in teaching and learning have shown this intersection to be critically important. As researchers have developed new conceptions of how students learn, teachers teach, and schools operate, the involvement of teachers and schools in many of the research projects has greatly enriched the findings and made them more applicable in the classroom.

A leader in this field is the National Research Center on Student Learning (NRCSL) at the University of Pittsburgh. Researchers there have been examining how students "learn to think and think to learn." With funding from the Office of Research and its predecessor agency, the National Institute of Education, NRCSL has explored many facets of knowledge construction, including how students can develop thinking and reasoning skills that allow them to generate deep comprehension even from incomplete information. Educators now understand the importance of inferences--both making them and testing them--as students create deep understanding of content material.

This book describes projects undertaken at NRCSL from 1985 to 1990 that examine reasoning and learning processes in mathematics, science, social science, and the comprehension of texts. As this book clearly demonstrates, education research is a rich and varied enterprise with great power to benefit and learn from education practice.

Joseph Conaty
Acting Director
Office of Research
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[Toward a New Science of Instruction] [Table of Contents] [Executive Summary]