ABSTRACT
The several studies reported in this chapter and in the postscript to it illustrate a progression from (1) basic research into a cognitive process to (2) extension of this research to the testing of a more powerful instructional intervention and finally to (3) an instructional experiment testing a practical classroom application. The main body of this chapter is devoted to a study using procedural facilitation to uncover students’ ability to carry out mental processes hypothesized to underly revision. It starts with a model of these hypothesized processes, then presents a complex procedural facilitation of these processes. The facilitation was designed to tell us as much as possible about students’ competence, not to be as facilitating as possible. The postscript to this chapter reports two studies that focus increasingly on issues of teachability of the processes examined in the first study.
