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The Geoffrey Saxe and Esmonde monograph (this issue) offers both fascinating empirical findings and intriguing theoretical insight about cultural change and individual cognition. Cultural and cognitive changes are "reciprocal processes," but how can these be related in research? One obvious way is to conduct longitudinal studies of the mutual influence between cultural-historical change and individual cognitive change by measuring the target cognition at multiple points on a historical time scale. Saxe, though his formulation is clearly historical, has adopted a different approach. His earlier work on adaptive changes in the Oksapmin body-part counting system of number due to the shift from the subsistence economy (with infrequent barter) to money economy in the Oksapmin community (Saxe, 1982) is seminal in the field of culture and cognition research. His major data were obtained from the comparison among those people who had the same cultural background but had had obviously different extent of exposure to the new economy, more specifically, the comparison among older adults, young adults, plantation returnees who had worked for an extended period outside the Oksapmin community, and trade store owners. As expected, with greater experience in the money economy, individuals increasingly used more sophisticated arithmetic strategies, though all of them still relied on the body-part sequence. In this commentary, the author examines Saxe and Esmonde's methodology and how much success the study has achieved with it.

In this article, we compare conventional uses of metacognition with the kinds of metacognition required by the teaching profession. We discover that many of problems and tasks used in successful metacognitive interventions tend to be reasonably well-defined problems of limited duration, with known solutions. Teaching has unique qualities that differentiate it from many of the tasks and environments that metacognitive interventions have supported. Teachers often confront highly variable situations. This led us to believe that successful teaching can benefit from what we call adaptive metacognition, which involves change to oneself and to one's environment, in response to a wide range of classroom social and instructional variability. We present several examples to illustrate the nature of metacognition required by teachers and the challenges of helping teachers recognize situations that require adaptive metacognition. We conclude the article by describing an approach, critical event-based instruction, which we have recently developed to help teachers appreciate the need for metacognitive adaptation by seeing the novelty in everyday recurrent classroom events.

Three experiments investigated whether Japanese children's segmentation units would change as they learned to read "kana" letters, which represent "morae" or Japanese subsyllabic rhythmic units. Results indicated that children's conscious segmentation of words, except for those having a geminate stop consonant, progressed from being a mixture of syllable- and mora-based to being predominantly mora-based. (Author/KB)

Analyzes videotaped lessons of 5th grade students on equivalent fractions from seven American and six Japanese classrooms in terms of a recurrent pattern in public discourse among a teacher and students. Found two approaches to the teaching-learning of the criteria for evaluating mathematical arguments. (Contains 17 references.) (Author/ASK)

Offers three different interpretations for the apparent failure to transfer (learning) and suggests that cognitivistic perspectives on transfer are limited. Suggests "productivity" rather than "transfer" to refer to the generality of learning. (SLD)

Explores the intuitive understanding of biology that occurs in early childhood and discusses later cognitive changes that occur. Young children possess a vitalistic understanding (e.g. breathing brings power to the body) that becomes mechanistic (e.g. an understanding of the heart and lungs) as they mature. Includes statistical and tabular data. (MJP)

It is argued that mathematical modelling is important in teaching mathematics and that teachers have to create cultural support for it in the classroom. Posing an unsolvable problem for students may reveal the culture of the classroom as it exists, but its contribution to developing the needed culture that supports mathematical modelling appears limited. (SLD)

Focuses on three main issues emerging from studies of conceptual development: (1) young children's naive theories of the world; (2) how innate constraints in conceptual development work; and (3) how innate and sociocultural constraints are integrated. Maintains that early development of core domains of thought (naive psychology, physics, and biology) is guided by both types of constraints. (KB)

The articles of this issue argue that taking culture into consideration in research on learning can enhance understanding of a variety of phenomena related to learning. Discussion reinforces this position and further considers learning processes that are or are not determined by culture. (SLD)

In 3 experiments, 1,598 Japanese college students were examined concerning the learning of facts in 2 content domains, baseball and music. Content knowledge facilitated fact learning only in the relevant domain; learning ability facilitated fact learning in both domains. Effects of content knowledge and learning ability were additive. (SLD)

DeVries' study of sociomoral development in direct-instruction, eclectic, and constructivist kindergartens is critiqued. Additional research in such areas as class-to-class and child-to-child variations and interpersonal negotiations in nonclassroom contexts is recommended. (LB)

There is a diversity of Japanese studies on human cognitive development focusing on conceptual change. Most of these studies show that there are some distinctly Japanese perspectives on conceptual change, demonstrating the importance of culture cognition and learning. Some of these Japanese perspectives include anthropomorphic epistemology, pragmatic orientation and collectivism. A discussion of each is presented.

Examined whether representational changes in digit memory are functions of children's expertise in mental abacus operation when abacus operators reproduced series of digits forward or backward. Found skilled operators equally facile with forward and backward reproduction, but novices slower going backward. Suggests advanced operators apply their mental abacuses to digit memory. (SKC)

Describes a model of cognitive and motivational processes in mathematics learning and relates the model to Brazilian street mathematics and abacus operation. Proposes instructional strategies for motivating conceptual understanding in school mathematics learning. (RJC)