Really raising achievement: Are the successes of Piagetian Cognitive Acceleration programmes on transferable achievement the result of changed general cognitive ability?
Abstract
This project aims to explore the effects of a Cognitive Acceleration program on general cognitive ability and, hence, bridge a gap in the literature that exists in relation to the plasticity of general cognitive ability. Adey and Shayer argue that the Cognitive Acceleration through Science Education (CASE) program effects a change in general intelligence that is evidenced by long-term, far transfer effects which are noticed during the secondary phase of education. Their data are strong and have been replicated a number of times but they examine achievement, as measured by external examinations in the UK.
Contemporary measures of general ability have not been successfully applied to the Cognitive Acceleration method in order to determine measurable changes in general cognitive ability and this project will employ Raven’s Standard Progressive Matrices, Piagetian Reasoning Tasks, The Latin Square Task, Bond’s Logical Operations Test as well as the NAPLAN tests to determine changes in general cognitive ability that can be attributed to Cognitive Acceleration through Science Education
Date: Wednesday 30 November 2016
Time: 11am to 1.30pm
Room 302 Social Science Building 24
St Lucia Campus
Panel: Dr. Kim Nichols (Chair) & Dr. Tony Wright
Principal Advisor: Professor Robyn Gillies
Associate Advisor/s: Professor Annemaree Carroll