Although originally published in France in 1951 this English translation was not published until 1975. The book supplements the authors’ previous publications on the development of thought in the child and is the result of two preoccupations: how thought that is in the process of formation acts to assimilate those aspects of experience that cannot be assimilated deductively – for example, the randomly mixed; and the necessity of discovering how the mental processes work in the totality of spontaneous and experimental searchings that make up what is called the problem of ‘induction’. Induction is a sifting of our experiences to determine what depends on regularity, what on law, and what on chance. The authors examine the formation of the physical aspects of the notion of chance; they study groups of random subjects and of ‘special’ subjects; and they analyse the development of combining operations which contributes to determining the relationship between chance, probability, and the operating mechanisms of the mind.

Current social and education policies directed toward children focus on improving cognition, yet success in life requires more than smarts. Heckman calls for a refocus of social policy toward early childhood interventions designed to enhance both cognitive abilities and such non-cognitive skills as confidence and perseverance. This new focus on preschool intervention would emphasize improving the early environments of disadvantaged children and increasing the quality of parenting while respecting the primacy of the family and America's cultural diversity. Heckman shows that acting early has much greater positive economic and social impact than later interventions -- which range from reduced pupil-teacher ratios to adult literacy programs to expenditures on police -- that draw the most attention in the public policy debate. At a time when state and local budgets for early interventions are being cut, Heckman issues an urgent call for action and offers some practical steps for how to design and pay for new programs.

This unusual volume presents an overview of Jean Piaget's work in psychology--from his earliest writings to posthumous publications. It also contains a glossary of the essential explanatory concepts found in this work. The focus is on Piaget's psychological studies and on the underlying epistemological theses. The book may be consulted in various ways depending on whether one is looking for an introduction to Piaget's theory, details about a particular concept, a survey of his body of work, or a historical perspective. Readers who are relatively unfamiliar with Piaget's ideas and seek access to them through this book will not necessarily proceed in the same way as those who are acquainted with Piaget's work and wish to refresh, synthesize, or complete their knowledge. The volume is divided into two major sections with several subdivisions as follows: * The Chronological Overview presents Piaget's early ideas and the most important sources of his inspiration, and reviews his research work dividing it into four main periods plus a transitional one. * The Glossary covers a number of explanatory concepts which are essential to Piaget's theory.

For fifty years Bärbel Inhelder (1913-1997) was the research companion of Jean Piaget. In this unique volume, published in her honour, leading international researchers examine the various aspects of her work and ideas and her contribution to developmental psychology. Following an initial chapter establishing Inhelder's stature as an independent researcher in her own right, the various research topics that she explored are reviewed and discussed with specific reference to her own perspective and in the chronological order in which she approached them. While the book explores Inhelder's work with her more famous colleague, it also highlights areas of research in which her ideas were at variance with those of Piaget, such as mental imagery, and areas in which her innovations have not been fully recognised, such as her discovery of the formal operations stage - an event usually attributed to Piaget - and her introduction of longitudinal studies in the field of cognitive development. Her research, viewpoint and contribution in other fields such as mental retardation, learning, and cross-cultural issues in development are also discussed. The final chapter, written by Inhelder herself, deals with experimental reasoning in children and adolescents and provides a glimpse of her creativity.

This compilation focuses on the theory and conceptualisation of statistics and probability in the early years and the development of young children’s (ages 3-10) understanding of data and chance. It provides a comprehensive overview of cutting-edge international research on the development of young learners’ reasoning about data and chance in formal, informal, and non-formal educational contexts. The authors share insights into young children’s statistical and probabilistic reasoning and provide early childhood educators and researchers with a wealth of illustrative examples, suggestions, and practical strategies on how to address the challenges arising from the introduction of statistical and probabilistic concepts in pre-school and school curricula. This collection will inform practices in research and teaching by providing a detailed account of current best practices, challenges, and issues, and of future trends and directions in early statistical and probabilistic learning worldwide. Further, it will contribute to future research and theory building by addressing theoretical, epistemological, and methodological considerations regarding the design of probability and statistics learning environments for young children.

The theory of information integration provides a unified, general approach to the three disciplines of cognitive, social, and developmental psychology. Each of these volumes illustrates how the concepts and methods of this experimentally-grounded theory may be productively applied to core problems in one of these three disciplines.

Bernard Lonergan devoted much of his life's work to developing a generalized method of inquiry, an integrated view which would overcome the fragmentation of knowledge in our time. In Topics in Education Lonergan adapts that concern to the practical needs of educators. Traditionalist and modernist notions of education are both criticized. Lonergan attempts to work out, in the context of the human good and the 'new learning,' the rudiments of a philosophy of education based on his well-known discovery of norms in the unfolding of intelligent, reasonable, and responsible consciousness. He explores how the scientific revolution has changed ways of understanding reality, and examines the implications of this revolution for education. Topics in Education, the first publication of his 1959 lectures, follows Lonergan on his early explorations of human development, studies the theories ofJean Piaget and others, and concludes with his own original ideas in the realms of ethics, art, and history. Bernard Lonergan (1904-1984), a professor of theology, taught at Regis College, Harvard University, and Boston College. An established author known for his Insight and Method in Theology, Lonergan received numerous honorary doctorates, was a Companion of the Order of Canada in 1971 and was named as an original members of the International Theological Commission by Pope Paul VI.

An issue in the current push for reform in mathematics education is the call to address statistics at the precollege level. This volume represents the emerging findings of an interdisciplinary collaboration among a group of mathematics educators, cognitive scientists, teachers, and statisticians to construct an understanding of how to introduce statistics education and assessment for students in elementary and secondary schools. A premise shared by the contributors to this volume is that when students are introduced to statistics at the K-12 level and provided with opportunities to do statistics that are related to actual life situations, they will be better prepared for decision making in the real world. The interdisciplinary nature of the group of researchers stimulated a lively interchange of ideas for enhancing the learning, teaching, and assessment of statistical understanding, which is reflected in this volume. Mathematics educators contribute their insights into how teachers teach mathematical ideas and heighten our awareness of the ecological needs of the current mathematics classroom. Cognitive scientists share their understanding of developmental differences in learning and present theoretical perspectives that contribute to the design of effective learning environments. Classroom teachers share their ideas about classroom activities and assessment of student learning, as well as their concerns for in-service training and workshops to help teachers acquire skills in this new content area. Statisticians offer their understanding of what is feasible to teach in the early grades, and what their view is of statistical literacy. The book is organized around four interdependent themes: content, teaching, learning, and assessment. By focusing their respective chapters on particular themes, the authors intend to cultivate a better understanding of how each relates to improvements in statistics education. This is the first book to: * address statistics learning in grades K-12, * address issues of statistical curriculum content in grades K-12, * address issues of assessment of statistics learning in grades K-12, * bring issues of technology instruction and assessment in statistics education in grades K-12, and * look at teacher education for statistics instruction in grades K-12. This is a must-read book for both practitioners and researchers involved in K-12 mathematics education.

Jean Piaget was one of the great thinkers of the twentieth century. His influence on developmental psychology, education and epistemology has been enormous. This text undertakes a reconstruction of the contexts and intellectual development of Piaget's numerous texts in the wide-ranging fields of biology, philosophy, psychoanalysis, child psychology, social psychology, theology, logic, epistemology and education. Richard Kohler reconstructs the often overlooked theological basis of Piaget's theories and analyses the influence this had upon the various areas of his research and reflections, particularly in relation to education.

Statistics and probability are fascinating fields, tightly interwoven with the context of the problems which have to be modelled. The authors demonstrate how investigations and experiments provide promising teaching strategies to help high-school students acquire statistical and probabilistic literacy. In the first chapter the authors put into practice the following educational principles, reflecting their views of how these subjects should be taught: a focus on the most relevant ideas and postpone extensions to later stages; illustrating the complementary/dual nature of statistical and probabilistic reasoning; utilising the potential of technology and show its limits; and reflecting on the different levels of formalisation to meet the wide variety of students’ previous knowledge, abilities, and learning types. The remaining chapters deal with exploratory data analysis, modelling information by probabilities, exploring and modelling association, and with sampling and inference. Throughout the book, a modelling view of the concepts guides the presentation. In each chapter, the development of a cluster of fundamental ideas is centred around a statistical study or a real-world problem that leads to statistical questions requiring data in order to be answered. The concepts developed are designed to lead to meaningful solutions rather than remain abstract entities. For each cluster of ideas, the authors review the relevant research on misconceptions and synthesise the results of research in order to support teaching of statistics and probability in high school. What makes this book unique is its rich source of worked-through tasks and its focus on the interrelations between teaching and empirical research on understanding statistics and probability.