248	Frameworks for Thinking

Classification by:	Values:	Practical illustrations
• structural features	• empiricism	for teachers:
and dynamic functions		• not applicable
of the mind

Some issues for further investigation

•Do complex, general models, such as Demetriou’s, offer more helpful insights for practitioners than those with a more narrow emphasis?

•To what extent can factor-analytic approaches yield meaningful insights into the nature and structure of intelligence?

•Is it meaningful to consider cognition independently of conation and affect?

•How far do these frameworks help us understand creativity?

•To what extent have Piaget’s ideas been superseded by the neoPiagetians?

•Is a ‘clinical’ approach to data gathering, such as that used by Piaget, compatible with psychology’s predominant emphasis upon scientific method?

•To what extent do stage models misrepresent the essential complexity of development?

•Why has Gardner’s theory met with such acclaim from teachers and lay audiences?

•To what extent are these frameworks universally applicable across cultures and contexts?

•Are theories of executive function helpful in explaining and predicting social ways of knowing and learning?

•What can epistemological debates and explorations offer to educationalists operating within contexts subject to high stakes testing?

•Is the conception of ‘g’ relevant in the ‘information age’?

•Can, and should, cognitive processes be subject to formalised individual assessment? If so, which processes should be highlighted as key?

•Which subject areas, occupations and forms of assessment make high demands on working memory?

Cognitive structure and/or development	249

•Can people reach the mature levels of developmental schemes such as those of Perry, Koplowitz, Belenky, and King and Kitchener through informal learning?

•Is post-modernity a developmental stage?

•What are the advantages and disadvantages of self-awareness?

•What is common sense?