Showing papers in "Review of Educational Research in 1984"

Perceived Problems of Beginning Teachers

Abstract: Perceived problems of beginning teachers in their first years of teaching are reviewed. Studies from different countries are included. Issues such as the reality shock and changes in behaviours and attitudes are considered also. The eight problems perceived most often are classroom discipline, motivating students, dealing with individual differences, assessing students’ work, relationships with parents, organization of class work, insufficient and/or inadequate teaching materials and supplies, and dealing with problems of individual students. There is a great correspondence between the problems of elementary and secondary beginning teachers. Issues such as person-specific and situation-specific differences, views of the principals, problems of experienced teachers, and job satisfaction of beginning teachers are discussed also. Three frameworks of teacher development are presented which provide conceptualizations of individual differences among beginning teachers. Finally, forms of planned support for begi...

The General/Academic Self-Concept Nomological Network: A Review of Construct Validation Research

Abstract: This paper reviews research in which the primary focus was directed toward the construct validation of self-concept (SC) within an educational framework Specifically, studies are included that investigate SC internally, with respect to its general facet (GSC) and academic facet (ASC), and externally, with respect to its relationship with academic achievement (AA) The literature is divided into two broad categories: within-network research and between-network research Within these divisions, the studies are further classified according to their methodological procedures It is concluded that SC is a multidimensional construct, having one general facet and several specific facets, one of which is ASC Although important findings have been noted regarding relations among GSC, ASC, and AA, an overall conceptual model and operational definition of SC have not been established and universally accepted A number of very recent studies, however, have provided increasing support for the hierarchical model Alth

Implications of Cognitive Theory for Instruction in Problem Solving

Abstract: Cognitive theories of problem solving and suggestions made by cognitive psychologists regarding how to teach problem solving are reviewed. Theories and suggestions from creativity research are also considered. The results are summarized in a description of how high levels of proficiency in problem solving are acquired and how problem solving skills might best be taught, keeping in mind a distinction between well-and ill-structured problems. The need for practice materials is discussed, and some desirable qualities of such materials are suggested. Finally, several unresolved issues regarding instructional methods are considered.

The Effects of Nonpromotion on Elementary and Junior High School Pupils: A Meta-Analysis

Abstract: In this study data from all studies identified as meeting the selection criteria were mathematically integrated to determine the effect of grade-level retention on elementary and/or junior high school pupils. When each effect size calculated was treated equally, a grand mean effect size of -.37 was obtained indicating that, on the average, promoted children scored .37 standard deviation units higher than retained children on the various outcome measures. When the effect sizes within each study were first averaged so that each study could be given equal weight, a grand mean of -.34 was obtained. By using the effect sizes from only those studies in which the promoted and nonpromoted pupils had been matched, a grand mean of -.38 was calculated. The high degree of consistency in these measures lends credibility to the validity of these findings. In addition to the grand means, effects sizes were calculated on various dependent variable measures, including academic achievement (further subdivided into various areas), personal adjustment (which included self- concept, social adjustment, and emotional adjustment), and attitude toward school, behavior, and attendance. In all cases, the outcomes for promoted pupils were more positive than for retained pupils.

Writing and Reasoning

Abstract: What contribution, if any, does written language make to intellectual development? Why, if at all, should we be concerned with the role of writing in our culture in general, and in our schools in particular? To what extent should we strive, as a recent report from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching has urged, to make clear and effective writing a "central objective of the school" (Boyer, 1983, p. 91)? If we do, can we assume that we will also be helping students develop the "higher order" intellectual skills, the "skilled intelligence," demanded by the authors of A Nation at Risk (National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983)? Questions such as these provide the context for the present review. At one level, it is widely accepted that good writing and careful thinking go hand in hand. This assumption underlies the concerns of the Council on Basic Education in their critique of the role of writing in American schools (Fadiman & Howard, 1979). The same assumption plays a major role in the agenda for research on writing developed by the National Institute of Education (Whiteman & Hall, 1981) and in the curriculum suggestions offered by advocates of "writing across the curriculum" (Applebee, 1977; Fulwiler & Young, 1982; Martin, D'Arcy, Newton, & Parker, 1976; Marland, 1977; Newkirk & Atwell, 1982). The role of writing in thinking is usually attributed to some combination of four factors: (a) the permanence of the written word, allowing the writer to rethink and revise over an extended period; (b) the explicitness required in writing, if meaning is to remain constant beyond the context in which it was originally written; (c) the resources provided by the conventional forms of discourse for organizing and thinking through new ideas or experiences and for explicating the relationships among them; and (d) the active nature of writing, providing a medium for exploring implications entailed within otherwise unexamined assumptions. If writing is so closely related to thinking, we might expect to begin this review with studies of the contribution of writing to learning and instruction. Yet research on writing has been remarkably slow to examine the ways in which writing about a topic may be related to reasoning. (Braddock, Lloyd-Jones, & Schorer, 1963, provide a good review of the concerns that dominated early studies of writing.) Two different traditions contribute to this reluctance: The first treats the process of writing as the rhetorical problem of relating a predetermined message to an audience that must be persuaded to accept the author's point of view. In this tradition the writing problem is one of audience analysis rather than of thoughtful examination of the topic itself. The second tradition assumes that the process of writing will in some inevitable way lead to a better understanding of the topic under consideration, though how this comes about tends to be treated superficially and anecdotally.

The Formation of Ability Conceptions: Developmental Trend or Social Construction?

Abstract: This paper examines a growing literature on the ways in which children develop conceptions of their own and their peers’ intellectual abilities, a phenomenon we will call ability formation. We show that this literature may be integrated usefully under a recently developed theory regarding the ways in which schools construct academic ability as a reality experienced by students. We argue that this perspective offers an advance on developmental interpretations of findings in this area.

Effects of Accelerated Instruction on Students

Abstract: This article presents results from a meta-analysis of findings on the effects of accelerated instruction on elementary and secondary school students. The data for the meta-analysis came from 26 controlled studies. The analysis showed that examination performance of accelerates surpassed by nearly one grade level the performance of nonaccelerates of equivalent age and intelligence. Examination scores of accelerates were equivalent to those of same-grade but older, talented nonaccelerates. Nonintellective outcomes were investigated relatively infrequently in the 26 studies and were not consistent from study to study.

Classroom Factors Affecting Students’ Self-Evaluations: An Interactional Model

Abstract: This paper presents a complex interactional model of classroom factors that contribute to the development of students’ self-evaluations. This model integrates previously investigated factors, suggests the operation of additional factors, and extends the notion of the operation of classroom factors to account for the possibility that certain factors may compensate for or negate the effect of otherwise crucial factors in influencing students’ interpretations of and reactions to classroom events. Described are (a) task structure, (b) grouping practices, (c) feedback and evaluation procedures and information about ability, (d) motivational strategies, (e) locus of responsibility for learning, and (f) the quality of teacher-student relationships. This notion of compensating and negating features within the classroom environment can be applied to understanding other student outcomes as they are influenced by teaching processes.

Dropping Out Among Language Minority Youth

Abstract: Dropping out of high school among language minority youngsters, a group characterized by an extremely high dropout rate, has seldom been examined. In this review, direct and indirect evidence concerning school-leaving among language minority youth is discussed. Generally speaking, it appears that the combination of socioeconomic disadvantage and early academic failure—a combination known to be predictive of dropping out—contributes to the higher dropout rate of language minority youngsters. Interestingly, however, although the evidence is by no means unequivocal, studies conducted to date suggest that dropping out is more prevalent among language minority youngsters from Hispanic backgrounds than among other non-English-speaking youngsters. Four hypotheses concerning the higher dropout rate of language minority Hispanics are discussed: (a) It is a socioeconomic artifact; (b) there exist ethnic group differences in the pressure parents place on youngsters to learn and use English; (c) school personnel inte...

School Literacy, Reasoning, and Civility: An Anthropologist’s Perspective

Abstract: This paper takes a perspective on schools, teaching, and learning that places in the foreground the social organization and cultural patterning of people's work in everyday life. In that perspective the notion of literacy, as knowledge and skill taught and learned in school, is not separable from the concrete circumstances of its uses inside and outside school, nor is it easily separable from the situation of its acquisition in the school as a social form and as a way of life. The school can be seen as an arena of political negotiation that embodies individual and group interests and ideologies. It is reasonable to expect that various kinds of literacies might represent a variety of interests and be embedded in a variety of belief systems. We can distinguish analytically between literacy and schooling, or between the arithmetical analog "numeracy," and schooling, or between the latest manifestation, "computer literacy," and schooling. In ordinary usage, however, the distinction between formal knowledge and school is blurred. This may be for good reasons, some of which I will explore in the discussion that follows. Literally, literacy refers to knowledge of letters and of their use in reading and writing, just as the ugly word numeracy refers to knowledge and use of numbers. But to be lettered means more than this, and has done so in the West since the establishment of European schools by the monastic chapters of cathedrals in the early Middle Ages. Literacy, as being lettered, has to do with strategy and prestige. This prestige is partly due to the strategic power that comes from mastery of an information communication system. This prestige also is derived from values of aesthetics and moral virtue which mask the issue of power. Indeed, in 17th century English, to be lewd is not to be sexually unrestrained, but to be unlettered. It is only later in English usage that lewdness took on sexual connotations, which gradually became the main usage. The prestigefulness of schooling also mixes power with the justification of power in morality. One is reminded that in the West, the institution of schooling began in the medieval Church, with literacy justified as a means to specialized knowledge that could be employed in maintaining the intellectual and social structure of the Church, which was seen as a means to collective and individual salvation. The same special knowledge of letters and numbers was also employed in maintaining the rule of secular landholders, whose growth and whose systems for distribution of food enabled the existence of feudal society itself. In colonial New England the institution of public schooling was also justified on moral grounds, with knowledge of letters being the route to individual salvation through reading the Bible, and the same specialized knowledge applying in the development of small freehold agriculture, commerce, and eventually industry. In the comments that follow I do not want to reduce schooling to a set of purely utilitarian functions, nor do I want to do so with literacy. But relationships between the various utilities and moralities of

The Use of High-Inference Measures To Study Classroom Climates: A Review

Abstract: This paper reviews the impact high-reference measures had on studying classroom climates. Early literature of classroom climates from the late twenties through the early sixties is reviewed. It is noted that the study of classroom climates had two distinct, unrelated beginnings. As a result, the use of high-inference measures to study classroom climates was not prevalent in the literature until the mid-sixties, whereas the study of classroom climates using other measures was well established by the early sixties. The review then discusses several high-inference measures developed in the last 30 years. Also, pertinent classroom climate literature that incorporates specific high-inference measures has been reviewed.

Alternative Conceptions of Intelligence and Their Implications for Education

Abstract: In this article, we review alternative conceptions of intelligence and their implications for education. First, we consider the basic question of just what intelligence is. Because no single universally accepted view exists, we compare and evaluate three major views of intelligence: the psychometric, the Piagetian, and the information-processing. The three views are complementary rather than mutually exclusive, each dealing with different but overlapping aspects of intelligence. Next, we consider the educational implications of each view for training content knowledge, which is currently emphasized in our schools, and for training intellectual skills, which is emphasized to a lesser degree. We compare the educational implications of each approach by discussing how each would address the problem of training students on one type of intellectual skill, solving verbal analogies. We conclude by summarizing the implications of current conceptions of intelligence for education and by making recommendations for r...

Reward-Induced Decrements and Increments in Intrinsic Motivation

Abstract: The circumstances under which rewards undermine or enhance intrinsic interest are examined. It emerges that the recipient’s perception of the functions of the dispensed reward is critically important. In particular, the distinction between reward instrumentality and rewards as symbols of success explains a vast array of otherwise contradictory findings. Quality and quantity of reward are shown not to be important per se, nor is there any evidence that undermining effects are associated with other disruptive effects on performance. A feature of current explanations of overjustification effects is the extent to which they carry implications for classroom practice. However, no extant explanation seems capable of incorporating all the available findings. Important directions for future research concern the interaction of reward-induced effects and other influences on intrinsic motivation and the relationship between school achievement and intrinsic interest in school activities.

Psychology and the Limitations of Individual Rationality: Implications for the Study of Reasoning and Civility

Abstract: This paper discusses the learning and teaching of reasoning and civility from the historical perspective of psychology as a discipline. Reasoning and civility are hardly a familiar couple. Indeed, they have been more frequently seen as competing educational goals rather than complementary purposes. It is our intention, however, to define reasoning and civility as two interacting dimensions of human action. We will argue that man must be both rational and civil, both a creature of reason and a cooperative social being. Moreover, not only are these two compatible human traits that are fully capable of pacific coexistence, human rationality is contingent upon human civility in certain fundamental ways. We do not use the term civility to connote some Western sense of "civilized" or even the traits of propriety, proper etiquette, or good classroom behavior, though the latter is an important concern in a society that defines classroom discipline as its most important problem of educational policy. Indeed, civility is the capacity to function as a citizen, as an active member of a group, in a way that benefits both the individual and the aggregate. This is not a paper summarizing the recent research on the teaching of reasoning skills, critical thinking, or problem solving, important though such a review would certainly be. Our goal is the discussion of the processes of reason or rationality within contemporary psychology writ large, rather than a detailed review of a body of empirical work involving any particular category of research on human reasoning. We have been invited to address the question of education for reasoning and for civility from the perspective of psychology. Psychology as a field has exhibited four faces, each countenance embodying a distinctive perspective on human capacity for reasoning and reasoned choice. We have called these four perspectives man as rational, man as irrational, man as boundedly rational, and man as collectively rational. The first is captured in the view of the human as a "rational animal," an organism endowed with the capacity to reason logically, to act consistently in its own interests (or in response to the contingencies of its environments), to sense, perceive, and subsequently represent mentally the objects and events of the real world, and to develop through education and learning increasing capacities for reason as it matures. This view of man as a rational machine is located in the writings of Aristotle and Francis Bacon, and in the British Associationists (Locke, Berkeley, Hume) who laid the philosophical foundations for American functionalism and behaviorism (Thomdike, Watson, Skinner), and probably defines the implicit prevailing view of human functioning among most contemporary educators.

Time, Equality, and Mastery Learning

Abstract: Mastery learning theorists make claims about reduction in learning time variability among students which, if valid, will have far-reaching implications about the nature of individual differences and equality of educational outcomes. These claims have stimulated considerable controversy. This review is an attempt to assess both mastery proponents’ and mastery critics’ claims in the context of learning time differences. The discussion is situated within the historic debates about stable versus alterable differences and the author’s contention of an equilibrium reached by current leveling practices. It is concluded that the weight of evidence does not support the mastery position of alterable differences as convincingly as it supports the critics’ position of stable individual differences. It is suggested that issues in this debate illustrate equality, time, and achievement dilemmas which may be inherent to most forms of collective instruction.

The Classification of Research Questions

Abstract: What are the kinds of questions that may be posed for research? A dozen schemes proposing to classify research questions are surveyed, analyzed, and applied to the understanding and practice of inquiry. The extent to which the various schemes account for questions found in educational journals is estimated. Some principles and issues are identified to stimulate work on the classification of research questions in education and other enterprises of inquiry. On the whole, little is known about the kinds of questions that may be posed for research.

Policy and Research Dilemmas in the Teaching of Reasoning: Unplanned Designs

Abstract: reasoning powers now adds one more R to the traditional three.' Documenting the current appeal of instruction in reasoning need go no further than the eruption of national reports and studies in the early years of this decade on America's apparent second-rate schools. A presidentially appointed commission noted how many students graduate without extensive training in thinking. Researchers acknowledged the limited presence among both teachers and students of critical thought in classrooms. Corporate-funded reports underscored a lack of independent and imaginative thinking among high school graduates-traits that top executives prize for both entry level and managerial positions.2 These reports and studies often drew from the same well for evidence: test results and first-hand observations of classrooms. Often citing National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) data and standardized achievement and aptitude scores, report writers also included what experienced observers recorded in their school visits. Both sets of data converged to produce a portrait of intellectually impoverished classrooms where unimaginative instruction tried to stuff a whale of knowledge into a sardine can of a student.3 But why the renewal of civic affection for reasoning in the early 1980s? Again, the answers can be partially located in these reports and the response of national media to them. The diminished international stature of the United States, a faltering economy, a growing trade deficit to nations that were once wartime enemies, and the rapid penetration of the computer into home and work provided sufficient justification for Americans to worry about their schools. National media spotlighted school failures and the "rising tide of mediocrity"-a phrase tailored for the media (no pun intended)-and hooked the attention of policymaker and citizen at every level of government. Calls for more engineers and mathematicians, better trained teachers, higher academic standards, and dozens of other reforms spilled from these reports. In short, a national consensus swiftly coalesced around the notion that unless steel was poured into the educational spine of the nation, America's global superiority would continue to slip. Schools, then, are the nation's second line of defense, another fail-safe system, in coping with an uncertain and unstable world. Echoes from earlier decades when Americans turned to their schools to rescue the country from complicated and costly problems can be easily heard in the current calls for school improvement.4

Testing Reasoning and Reasoning About Testing

Abstract: In the United States in recent years, much worry and writing have been occasioned by the apparent lack of influence of social science research on practical affairs, including affairs of schooling. In 1979, for example, Lindblom and Cohen wrote, "In public policy making, many suppliers and users of social research are dissatisfied, the former because they are not much listened to, the latter because they do not hear much they want to listen to" (p. 1). Whatever the merits of the general proposition that social science research has exerted little influence on practical affairs-and in particular, the practice of education-there is one very clear exception to this notion. It is the influence that research on testing has exerted on education. This influence will be traced in detail later in this paper, but for the moment, only two works need to be cited. Twice in the last two decades, the National Academy of Education has set out to explore the relationship between research and education, and how the latter might benefit from the former. These efforts resulted in books to which diverse groups of eminent scholars contributed. Each volume gave extended examples of how research has influenced educational practice. The first example in each volume? In Research for Tomorrow's Schools (Cronbach & Suppes, 1969), it was "Mental Tests and Pupil Classification." In Impact of Research on Education (Suppes, 1978), it was "On the Theory-Practice Interface in the Measurement of Intellectual Abilities" by John Carroll. If theory and research concerning standardized testing have influenced educational practice, it is worth tracing the relationship for several reasons. First, it illustrates the variety of ways in which educational research may influence educational practice. Second, it indicates something of future possibilities and limits for research concerning testing to improve teaching and learning. Third, it suggests a point that "suppliers... of social research... not much listened to" may too easily forget-namely that not all influence is useful or of the stuff to which we ought aspire. Thus the purpose of this paper is to recount the history of research and reasoning about mental testing and its role in educational practice. The history of this relationship is here divided into three broad parts. The first concerns the roots of mental testing up until approximately World War I (WWI). The second, lasting from WWI until 1950, deals with the refinement of testing techniques and institutionalization of testing in educational practice. The third, lasting from about 1950 through the 1970s, was a time when education emerged prominently on the national agenda, and the role of testing in the agenda became markedly more mixed. Tests were seen variously as indicators of educational problems, as solutions to some of those same problems, and as sources of other troubles. The last part of this paper, after summarizing what the relationship between research concerning testing and educational practice has been in the past, suggests research regarding testing that might constructively influence educational practice in the future.

Buch und Lesen: Historical Perspectives on Literacy and Schooling

Abstract: Book learning, something that in the medieval world was the preserve of "old men and monks," has become a universal experience of growing up in the modern West. Historian Elizabeth Eisenstein (1979, p. 432) calls this gradually wrought shift possibly the most fundamental social revolution in European history. Previous transformations laid the groundwork. The evolution of writing from symbols representing things (pictograms) to symbols representing the sound of human speech created syllabaries and alphabets. This made writing and reading easier and more accessible. Hence literacy gained greater utility. The invention of paper, the printing press, and the substitution of wood pulp for rags in paper manufacture were both cause and effect of an expanding literacy. While the alphabetization of oral language divides nonliterate and literate societies, literacy becomes culturally significant only when a "literacy consciousness" is internalized by enough people beyond some priestly or civic elite. This necessitates perceiving literacy as a valuable tool (Clanchy, 1981, pp. 14-45; Harman, 1970, p. 228). It means that writing-tablets, manuscripts, books-must, figuratively, be taken out of temples and monasteries where it is treated as holy relics and be given some circulation among the populace and its wider concerns. This process was accomplished only slowly before the 17th century. Moreover, literate societies maintain vigorous oral tradition and memory arts alongside writing and its cultural and cognitive progeny. In the formal education of literate societies, lectures and "teacher talk" coexist with book learning. Perhaps analogous to our contemporaries who deplore using hand-held calculators in schools because they fear loss of mastery of memorized arithmetic facts, Socrates reportedly preferred oral teaching to the use of texts; he contended that reliance on writing promotes forgetfulness and the appearance of mastery without substance. (For a review of the question of literacy's relationships to mental abilities, see Scribner & Cole, 1978.) Plato argued that, compared to dialogue, reading's effects are shallower and less persisting. Being social, oral language is less easily evaded than are the solitary activities of reading and writing. Where the latter seem difficult, unrewarding, or excessively abstract, they may be avoided by technically literate persons. Moreover, even today, "print is typically an incidental and auxiliary feature of a great many social situations and settings; there are many substitutes for it and strategies for circumventing it" (Levine, 1982). Thus, our disappointments with schooling for mass literacy may be somewhat due to "the gap between the public literate tradition of the school, and the very different and indeed often directly contradictory private oral traditions of the pupil's family and peer group" (Goody & Watt, 1962; their term "buch und lesen culture" I adapted for my title). This is a broader view of the sometimes troublesome relationships between the oral

Three Ideological Orientations in School Vandalism Research

Abstract: School vandalism is one of the major problems threatening the educational system of various western countries. We review the literature on this topic and point out some of the difficulties that hamper a thorough understanding of this social phenomenon. We emphasize those strategies that have been found to be successful in reducing the incidence of this offence. We interpret the available information in terms of three ideological orientations: conservative, liberal, and radical, each of which can be shown to result in effective policies. The choice as to which strategy to employ on a national basis thus depends less on its proven efficacy than on the values and attitudes of those concerned with the problem. Hence, we argue that future investigations into school vandalism must adopt an “action research” approach, that is, research that continually assesses the effect that certain manipulations have on a specific school system. Representatives of all interested parties (teachers, parents, and students) must ...

Philosophy, Reason, and Literacy

Abstract: Educational philosophers today, often from different vantage points, speak of rationality as fundamental to the literacy sought by means of education Some place their emphasis on reason as displayed in the making of critical judgments; some, on reason as expressed in the conceptualizing or symbolic structuring of experience; still others, on reason as it plays a part in the constructing of social realities There are those who direct particular attention to the regulative role of reason: They concern themselves with rule-governed or principled thought and action on the assumption that rules and principles either define or are created by human rationality There are those, too, who stress the centrality of critical reflection in lived situations For them, this type of reflection constitutes the most productive mode of rational action; they view it as a way of transforming the lived world The philosophic interest in reason has long roots, reaching back into the classical past In the western world, philosophy preceded by 2,000 years the growth of what we now conceive of as the natural and social sciences Indeed, philosophy was long thought to be the queen of the sciences, especially in the years when "science" was identified with mathematical and logical thought The paradigm was found in a reasoning process that involved no interventions in the phenomenal world To reason was to take the stance of the contemplative spectator and "see" with the eyes of the mind For Plato, the man who achieved the status of philosopher-king had the capacity to know the formal features of things and to trace the connections between the forms or "ideas" that constituted true "reality" (The Republic, nd, pp 277-290) To gain such absolute and universal knowledge, the philosopher had to detach himself from his temporal being as a participant in the transient, imperfect material world So detached, his rational faculty would disclose the objective patternings, the meanings of all appearances This concern for disclosure can be found in Aristotle as well, for all his abandonment of dualism and detachment For him, human rationality entailed the ability to grasp the design or the telos of reality But reason now was given both a theoretical and a deliberative dimension It could not only make possible knowledge of the truth for its own sake; it could enable rational beings to make useful or beautiful things and to guide their conduct according to an idea of the good Granting the importance of theoretical knowledge, Aristotle said, "To know what excellence is, is not enough; we must endeavor to acquire it and to act accordingly" (Nichomachean Ethics, Book 10, chap 9, 1179b) Here too, however, and throughout antiquity, the mind, in the right use of reason, was oriented not to the understanding of experience but to knowing the essential nature of things As late as the 16th century, Francis Bacon, in his preoccupation with the "idols" or the false ideas that blinded human beings to the truth (Novum Organum, pp 38-68), retained the notion that reason unassisted could come to know the truth if reason could be freed from error Bacon tried to develop an inductive logic that would replace Aristotle's deductive logic; but he expected to use induction to

An Economic View of the Acquisition of Reasoning Skills: Agenda for Research in the Information Age.

Abstract: Readers might well wonder why economists should be asked to discuss the acquisition of reasoning skills. Such a subject seems more properly the domain of psychology. To be sure, educators could have some practical insights on the matter; even philosophers might help by telling us what reasoning is. But economists? There is, after all, little or no formal economics literature directly on the topic. Yet in an important sense, much of analytical economics is precisely germane. This becomes clearer when one realizes that a good working definition of economics is "the study of reasoning applied to ordinary choices faced by individuals and by groups." According to this definition, economics is an analytical, normative, and positivist discipline. It uses reason to study the application of reason; it makes prescriptions about how to make "reasonable" choices; and it conducts tests of the correspondence between mundane events and theories of rational individual and collective choice in order to revise those theories and improve its prescriptions. (For a related discussion of how economists argue, see McCloskey, 1983.) Indeed, the very root of the word for our discipline suggests the application of higher order reasoning to the orderly running of everyday household affairs. So despite the fact that few economists have written formally on the subject, understanding the acquisition of reasoning skills is as central to the intellectual lives of economists as water is to the lives of fish. (Readers interested in an account of the development of economic analysis could still do little better than Schumpeter, 1954.) Our essay considers four questions about the acquisition of reasoning skills. Each represents an area where economists might provide some useful guidance to educational researchers. Together, they span the natural set of questions that economists would ask about this topic. The questions are as follows:

Reviewing the Reviews on Literacy and Reasoning: Some Selected Themes and References

Abstract: This piece is not a synthesis of the articles in this issue of RER. Doing justice to such an interdisciplinary task demands more ability than I have. Instead, this is an attempt to highlight briefly some themes, which appear to run through the previous reviews and which-it seems to me-need to be taken into account in considering pedagogical practices and policymaking assumptions consistent with these themes. I am aware of some of the biases reflecting personal beliefs and trained professional orientation in the inevitable selective choices of themes and inferences drawn about applications. Other limitations embedded in my own bounded rationality may have influenced any perceptions and selection even more powerfully. Finally, an important self-imposed limitation pays tribute to the range of specialties in these reviews. The previous pieces, the findings they report, and the conclusions drawn in them constitute almost all of the universe of attention for the set of inferences drawn here. In a few instances it seemed useful to go beyond these papers to note aspects of the American educational policy system. Reference is made to these. The much larger body of scholarship that could have been brought in, especially from the disciplines not represented in this issue, has been excluded from this piece. Most important, I have avoided any attempt to critique these pieces; that would have been presumptuous in several cases given the range of disciplines represented. This is not a summary of the other articles in this issue; without a critical analysis of them, such a summary would be banal. Selected inferences of some general themes and some additional inferences of application drawn from the themes is what this end piece is about. Finally, there is a closing comment calling attention to one major lacuna in the issue as a whole. Some General Themes One way of organizing these pieces is from the most general to the most specific aspects of literacy and reasoning in relationship to education and schools emphasized by these writers. While this approach is far from flawless, it does pay tribute to the central concerns and conceptualizations that distinguish the range of disciplines represented. At the more general end, for example, would be the articles by Greene, Clifford, and Brown and Saks, followed by the piece by Shulman and Carey, and then those by Haney, Cuban, Erickson, and Applebee. Readers using some similar continuum of general to specific relative to schools and pedagogy might well differ on this placement of the articles, especially on the relative location of the last four, but a rough correlation among independent raters seems likely. If, in addition, readers give attention to the range of different emphases in definitions, their referents, and even going beyond these differences in meaning to the respective related significances drawn by these authors, one conclusion anticipated by the