Concrete Thinkers Research Articles

Essential Characteristics of the Concepts of “Family” and “Marriage” in the Russian Worldview Across Four Generations

This article examines the evolution of the concepts of “family” and “marriage” in the Russian worldview across four generations: children (41 respondents, with significant differences observed between the groups aged 5–7 and 10–13 years, as well as preschoolers (under 7 years) generally lacking a fully developed concept of “marriage”), young adults (24 respondents aged 19–24 years), middle-aged adults (32 respondents aged 42–55 years), and seniors (14 respondents aged 66–80 years). The respondents were asked about their five reactions (words and/or word combinations) to the stimuli family and marriage. The analysis of these reactions reveals that both concepts have a complex structure, which can be best described as a frame consisting of slots (groups of related semantic reactions), and unfold over time as a series of changes: preschoolers are normally concrete thinkers with a straightforward idea of family, a result of their age-specific naïve worldview → children aged 10–13 years attain an ability to abstract from reality, but still depend on their immediate experiences → young adults, starting to live on their own, have an abstract, idealized model of family and marriage → middle-aged adults and seniors associate family and marriage with their personal life experiences.

Numeracy Literacy Ability Viewed by Characteristics of Students' Way of Thinking

Thinking is a cognitive activity that produces different ways of solving problems which affects numeracy literacy ability. The numeracy literacy consists of two domains, namely change and relationship and quantity. This study aimed to describe students’ numeracy literacy ability viewed by characteristics of students’ way of thinking. This study was a qualitative research with a phenomenological design. The participants were eight 9th grade students from a junior high school in Central Java, Indonesia, who had different characteristics, that are concrete sequential (CS), concrete random (CR), abstract sequential (AS), and abstract random (AR). The data were collected by using written tests, questionnaires, and interviews. The results show that each characteristic had its own way of solving the numeracy literacy problems. In quantity domain, CS, CR, and AR students tend to answer the problem with one solution; however, AS students responded with various alternative answers. In change and relationship domain, a difference was observed between concrete thinkers and abstract thinkers. CS and CR students tend to solve problems by using an example to take a trial-and-error approach. Meanwhile, AS and AR students tend to work using existing concepts by manipulating the formulas in the question with logical and rational processes. Keywords: characteristics of students’ way of thinking, junior high school, numeracy literacy ability

Pelatihan Guru SD Inpres Tiom Cara Mengajarkan Hitung Dasar Matematika dengan Metode Jarimatika dan Alat Peraga

Mathematics is one of the subjects that has been taught from the elementary level. However, in reality in the Papua Highlands area thats mathematics is still a problem for both students and teachers. Teachers who are used to teaching using the lecture method make students lazy to take math lessons which results in low math learning outcomes. Mathematics which has an abstract nature requires teachers to be able to concretize it so that it is easily understood by students, considering that students at the basic level are still classified as concrete thinkers. The purpose of implementing this PKM is to provide training for Inpres Tiom Elementary School teachers in creating a pleasant atmosphere for learning mathematics without having to burden students' brains, introduce methods that can be used to teach basic arithmetic, improve student learning outcomes, especially in fostering cooperation between Inpres Tiom Elementary School teacher partners with STKIP Abdi Wacana Wamena. Overcoming the problems above, a solution is provided so that the mathematics lessons being taught become fun lessons for elementary school children, partners are given learning training with the use of visual aids and the application of the jarimatics method. Based on the results of the evaluation of the training activities through the questionnaire provided, it was found that all the teachers who participated in the training strongly agreed with the training activities.

Sixth grade students’ problematization of and decision-making about a wind energy socio-scientific issue

Little is known about how middle school students problematize socio-scientific issues (SSIs), particularly contemporary energy challenges. To address this need, we developed and implemented an instructional module focused on a local wind energy issue and conducted research to explore how sixth-grade students frame, reason, and make decisions about the issue using Construal Level Theory (CLT). Results from analysis of student artifacts (n = 116) and interviews (n = 16) suggest concrete thinkers have negative perceptions, whereas abstract thinkers have positive perceptions. This study’s findings have important implications for the design of SSI-based curriculum and instruction.

A Sweet Romance: Divergent Effects of Romantic Stimuli on the Consumption of Sweets

Abstract Drawing from research on food consumption, conceptual metaphors, and assimilation and contrast, we examine how exposure to romantic stimuli (e.g., watching a romantic ad, reading a romantic note) affects consumers’ subsequent consumption of sweets. Across five studies, we find that romantic stimuli exposure increases sweet food consumption among abstract thinkers but reduces sweet food intake among concrete thinkers. We also identify the moderating role of metaphor content on this finding such that the effects of romantic exposure on the consumption of sweets occur only when the metaphoric association between love and sweetness is highlighted but dissipate when a competing metaphor is accentuated.

Using Arts Integration to Make Science Learning Memorable in the Upper Elementary Grades: A Quasi-Experimental Study

The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) have brought a stronger emphasis on engineering into K-12 STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) instruction. Introducing the design process used in engineering into science classrooms simulated a dialogue among some educators about adding the arts to the mix. This led to proposals for a STEAM (STEM + arts) curriculum, as well as warnings that integrating the arts would weaken STEM instruction. The study summarized in this article tested the hypothesis that the arts might provide upper-elementary students, who were still concrete thinkers, with a powerful means of envisioning phenomena that they could not directly observe. This study investigated the impact of STEAM lessons on physical science learning in grades 3 to 5. Ten out of the 55 high-poverty (Title 1) elementary schools in a large urban district were randomly chosen as treatment schools and divided into two cohorts. Using a quasi-experimental design that holds general student scientific achievement constant, the study found that students exposed to the STEAM lessons demonstrated greater improvement on physical science benchmark assessments than students exposed to a STEM-only physical science curriculum.

Assessing Learning Styles of Graduate Entry Nursing Students as a Classroom Research Activity: A quantitative research study

BackgroundA number of studies across different disciplines have investigated students' learning styles. Differences are known to exist between graduate and baccalaureate nursing students. However, few studies have investigated the learning styles of students in graduate entry nursing programs. . ObjectivesStudy objective was to describe graduate entry nursing students' learning styles. Design/Setting/Participants/MethodsA descriptive design was used for this study. The Index of Learning Styles (ILS) was administered to 202 graduate entry nursing student volunteers at a southwestern university. Descriptive statistics, tests of association, reliability, and validity were performed. Graduate nursing students and faculty participated in data collection, analysis, and dissemination of the results. ResultsPredominant learning styles were: sensing – 82.7%, visual – 78.7%, sequential – 65.8%, and active - 59.9%. Inter-item reliabilities for the postulated subscales were: sensing/intuitive (α=0.70), visual/verbal (α=0.694), sequential/global (α=0.599), and active/reflective (α=0.572). Confirmatory factor analysis for results of validity were: χ2(896)=1110.25, p<0.001, CFI=0.779, TLI=0.766, WRMR=1.14, and RMSEA =0.034. ConclusionsPredominant learning styles described students as being concrete thinkers oriented toward facts (sensing); preferring pictures, diagrams, flow charts, demonstrations (visual); being linear thinkers (sequencing); and enjoying working in groups and trying things out (active),. The predominant learning styles suggest educators teach concepts through simulation, discussion, and application of knowledge. Multiple studies, including this one, provided similar psychometric results. Similar reliability and validity results for the ILS have been noted in previous studies and therefore provide sufficient evidence to use the ILS with graduate entry nursing students. This study provided faculty with numerous opportunities for actively engaging students in data collection, analysis, and dissemination of results.

Children’s experience of holiness in health care. Are we rendering effective spiritual care?

Children themselves place a high value on their own spiritual care when in hospital. However, the spiritual care of children in hospital is often overlooked. Hospitalisation and medical procedures can be traumatic and overwhelming for children, they often see hospitalisation as punishment for something they did wrong and they can even experience spiritual distress during illness and suffering. The spiritual care of hospitalised children should thus be a priority to help these children making sense of pain and suffering, and assisting them to connect with a loving and forgiving God. Spirituality namely influences a diverse range of human concerns such as beliefs about illness and health, fears, relationships with family and friends and the experience of pain and suffering. Unfortunately, children often harbour misconceptions precisely in these areas. This article will draw directly on the given that children are concrete thinkers, yet able to have an understanding of holiness and God as the Holy One, if they receive the right guidance. The study will explore children’s spirituality and the way in which they experience holiness in the healthcare environment from a nursing science perspective.

Trickle-Down Professionalism: Hidden Curriculum and the Pediatric Hospitalist

The orthopedic surgeon was adamant that the Gram-positive cocci growing from the blood culture of a patient with hip pain represented a true infection and that the patient needed to be started on antibiotics. He told me this over the phone, and reiterated it to my team in no uncertain terms while I was out of the workroom. I was less convinced. The child had defervesced without treatment, and his inflammatory markers had remained low. The next day, when the culture was identified as coagulase-negative staph, and the child was discharged from the hospital without further intervention, I remarked to my team: “Surgeons are very concrete thinkers, who see the world in black and white. Hospitalists are abstract thinkers, who see the world in shades of gray.” I might as well have spouted off the old cliche: “Surgeons cut, but don’t think. Primary care physicians think, but don’t cut.” But inadvertently, I was telling my team something else: those who disagree with me are not worthy of my respect, and in so doing, I was indoctrinating them in a destructive verse of the “hidden curriculum” of medicine. The hidden curriculum is defined as those values that are primarily implicitly, rather than explicitly, learned in the workplace, and they typically deal with issues of professionalism, or, often, the lack thereof.1–3 Medical students pick up these ideas from day 1: physician knowledge is superior to nurse knowledge; those beneath you on the educational ladder can be treated with less respect than those above you; questioning a superior is a sign of disrespect; psychiatric patients bring their diseases on themselves and deserve …

Good Stories: Using Metaphors to Teach Philosophy

Courses that introduce students to philosophy, especially to freshmen, can be a challenge to teach. One of the problems is that while philosophical ideas are often quite abstract, beginning students are often concrete thinkers. One way to overcome this obstacle without making the course less challenging, is to introduce abstract ideas— such as those found in metaphysics, epistemology and philosophy of mind—through the use of metaphors and other literary devices that compare each abstract philosophical concept to something more concrete. For example, reality is discussed as air, fire, shadows; knowledge as dreams, blank slates, and information processing; minds as chariots, bundles and computers; God as an artist, a perfect human and belief as a wager; and the meaning of life as a rock, a middle path and a leap of faith. There was a total of thirty various philosophical metaphors used in this course. After the metaphorical description of the concept, and only after this, does the instructor offer a more literal explanation of the text. With their knowledge of the concrete story as a foundation, students seem to grasp more readily the underlying abstract concept when it is described literally. Assessment of this approach was through instructor observation, student self-reports and the creation of their own metaphors. Overall it appears that the use of metaphorical thinking first promoted better learning in this beginning philosophy course.

Adolescent Psychosocial, Social, and Cognitive Development

Adolescent Psychosocial, Social, and Cognitive Development

Personality / Learning Styles Among Dental Hygiene Students

One hundred eighteen dental hygiene students were surveyed to determine their personality / learning styles. It was found that they varied significantly from the general population on three of the four measures. Using the Paragon Learning Styles Inventory 1, the students showed high trends toward sensate (concrete thinkers as opposed to conceptual), feeler as opposed to thinker, and judger (having definite opinions) as opposed to perceiver (curious). The implications of this study could be helpful for dental hygiene educators as well as dental office communication and team building.

Dificultades en la comprensión de las explicaciones de los libros de texto de física

Explanations of Spanish secondary school physics textbooks are ana:yzed using a classificatory scheme under two cathegories: concrete and formal. The proportions of concrete and formal explanations found in 589 units of analysis from five textbooks are given. The proportions of «concrete explanations» at the begining of a chapter are also reported. The results are discussed considering the proportion of concrete and formal thinkers as measured w:th the Longeot test found in a high -status highschoo: of Madrid.

Escapable conclusions: Toomela (2003) and the universality of trait structure.

A. Toomela (2003) concluded that personality structure may be shaped by a cultural mechanism, word meaning structure, and that the apparent universality of the Five-Factor Model (FFM) was the result of inadequate sampling of concrete thinkers. A reanalysis using targeted rotation showed that the intended structure was generally replicated; small deviations in the most concrete thinkers were probably due to measurement error. The reanalysis authors found no evidence of structural differences in a second sample of adults classified as concrete or abstract thinkers. The FFM structure has been replicated in many samples containing individuals with cognitive or educational limitations; observer ratings may be preferred if these limitations are severe. To date, there is no compelling evidence that culture affects personality structure.

'Technoscience' Education: Empowering Citizens Against the Tyranny of School Science

The status quo for school science and technology is unacceptable. While the former often is required for admission to university engineering, as well as to science programmes, the latter is deemed most appropriate for less able, concrete thinkers. This situation persists, despite the fact school science tends to generate large groups of citizens who are relatively scientifically and technologically illiterate, largely as a result of its preoccupation with identifying and training potential scientists and engineers. This practice is tyrannical. It must be abandoned forthwith. A realistic alternative is a combined technology and science programme – perhaps called 'technoscience' education – that would treat science and technology as equals. Such courses may, as well, be more democratic in the sense that technological problem solving often is more natural to everyday situations that everyone may find useful, not just future scientists or engineers. A framework for combined technology and science courses is described and defended here. Originally developed through collaborative action research amongst practising teachers of science, the approach appears to be feasible, under certain – perhaps ideal – conditions. A number of changes to science and technology education may be necessary for broader implementation, not the least of which is a general retrenchment in expectations for pre-determined learning, along with adjustments to teacher education. Nevertheless, the approach is recommended because of its emphasis on: personalization, inclusion, problematization, explicitness, apprenticeship, authenticity, contextualization and freedom.

Communicating physics through story

For centuries telling stories has been a valuable wayof imparting a message. Indeed this approach may be more usefulfor children who are concrete thinkers than formal methods of teaching physics.

Challenging behaviour in dementia: A critical role for psychology

Challenging behaviour has been a known feature of dementia for at least 90 years but until recently has been largely ignored by serious research. Unfortunately, for those exposed to it, phenomena such as continuous screaming or violence are impossible to ignore. They can cause severe distress to family members and are a major reason for committal to residential care, where nursing staff also find it hard to cope. The research vacuum means that these behaviours are often inappropriately managed with medication, and has also made possible claims of great efficacy, unsupported by evidence, for various psychosocial “therapies”. Psychology, a discipline supposedly uniquely placed to address behavioural phenomena, has been largely invisible to date. Nevertheless, there are psychologists working with these severe problems, which are extremely complex and not amenable to single-modality solutions or concrete thinkers wedded to one theoretical framework. This paper provides a brief overview of opportunities for psychology to make a significant contribution in four inter-linked areas: conceptualisation and classification, alleviating carer distress, development of management techniques, and development of research methodology.

The continuity as the basic of infant representation space knowledge

The present study investigated whether matching instructional method to Piagetian cognitive levels of dialysis patients increases knowledge and compliance with fluid restriction. Subjects were forty-three hemodialysis patients from multiple outpatient settings considered noncompliant with fluid restriction. Piagetian cognitive level was determined using a videotaped version of Lawson's Classroom Test of Formal Reasoning. Patients were then randomly assigned to receive either a concrete or abstract instructional method. Knowledge was measured with a pretest-posttest instrument based on the content of the diet instruction. Interdialytic weight gains preinstruction and postinstruction served as the compliance measure. Patients showed significant increase in overall pretest-posttest-knowledge regardless of instructional method (P < .002). However, concrete thinkers taught with the abstract instructional method were unable to apply the knowledge gained. Compliance improved only in patients for whom cognitive level and instructional method matched (P < .007). Matching cognitive level to instructional method appears valuable in obtaining desired patient education outcomes.

Non‐linear proportionality in science problems

A group of students whose school leaving qualifications showed them to be highly numerate and who were studying science subjects at college were investigated with reference to their understanding of the concept of proportionality. This investigation was based on Piagetian‐type questions. As a result the group was identified as having both concrete and formal thinkers. In a course designed to teach students to handle non‐linear proportionality both sections improved their score on a post‐test on non‐linear proportionality items but the formal thinkers made a significantly greater improvement. It is suggested that the presence on such a course of concrete thinkers is explained by the different age profile and educational history of the two subgroups. In a later comparison with college examinations in physics, chemistry and pure mathematics, it was found that the students’ Piagetian level correlated highly with success in physics, but considerably less so with mathematics. It is suggested that this indicates...

Creative potential among persons labeled developmentally delayed, part II: Meditation as a technique to release creativity

Persons who are developmentally delayed can under proper conditions display engagement in the creative process (Stamatelos & Mott, 1983, 1984, 1985) . The fact that such persons behave in a manner that appears to be noncreative is more a result of their environment and treatment than of an inherent trait (Stamatelos & Mott, 1985 ; Zigler, 1973) . The apparent lack of creative thinking attributed to them is largely a result of applied behavior methodology/technology . Our system tends to devalue divergent thinking processes while recognizing the value of concrete, qualifiable, and observable data . The emphasis of habilitative programming is on social conformity (Tompkins, 1983) and overstructuring of the environment to ensure socially appropriate behavior. This model is limited in habilitative scope, often producing negative effects on the emotional well-being of clients (Matt, Rosenkoetter, Stamatelos, 1981) and producing stereotyped concrete thought patterns . We have found that within an environment that values authenticity and divergent thinking, clients considered rigid and concrete thinkers can successfully engage in the creative process . We believe that successful creative engagement among this group is due (1) to the removal of external contingencies (i .e ., rewards and punishments) and (2) to the establishment of natural, noncontingent interactions . Incubation time is a necessary component of the creative process that is absent from the treatment model designed for persons who are developmentally delayed . The concept of incubation and its necessity among these persons has led to the development of incubation/meditation techniques within the Habilitative Arts Therapy (HAT) milieu .' There is a strong relationship between incubation (the unconscious processing of information) and meditation which has a similar function, the essential difference being one of awareness and intent. Incubation is purely primary process while meditation (upon something) is a conscious function to stimulate primary process and bring it into awareness . Incubation and meditation are the underside and surface of the same stream . While it is difficult to research incubation because of its unconscious nature, meditation has been well researched in recent years and is used as a psychotherapeutic tool. Research indicates that meditation can produce states of relaxation with improvements in such conditions as anxiety, phobias, addictions, and hypertension (Evans, 1970; Kohut, 1971), while increasing