ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews of the theoretical framework for developmental processes that informs the work. It describes a particular cognitive dimension, and then describes how this dimension appears to operate in the two groups of children in schools, Hawaiian and Navajo, offering a brief description of the relevant dimensions of the cultures that appears to under-grid the cognitive organizations. McShane and Plas' results of comparative testing again demonstrated that Native Americans' cognitive patterns include spatial abilities that are better developed than sequencing skills, and that are superior to conceptual and acquired knowledge performances. Native Hawaiians tend toward wholistic thinking as compared with Euro-Americans; Native Indians are far more wholistic in cognition than either. The enlightened goal of education should be to produce a cognitive pluralism that allow, within each society and each individual, the coordinated use of differing processes to solve the demanding task of coping with contemporary pluralistic society.
