Summary. In the search for factors affecting the ‘educability’ of children, tasks derived from the theoretical positions of Piaget and Bruner were administered to children of primary school age in three cultures. The sample, of total size 1,536, was drawn from New South Wales, Australia, Papua, New Guinea and children of non‐English speaking migrants in Sydney, Australia. Instruments were designed or adapted to minimise difficulties of cross‐cultural application. The tasks were divided into two groups—‘product’ (getting it right) and ‘process’ (how it was done). Behaviours, representative of development according to the theories of both Piaget and Bruner, were found in all three cultures. The order of difficulty of the product tasks, with some minor exceptions, was the same for all three, whether the children had been to school or not. The Bruner process tasks presented a different picture. There were material differences from culture to culture in the order of appearance of various identifiable processes. As difficulty of task increased, the process commonly used by the children of each culture changed. With the most difficult tasks the children from all cultures tended to use the same process. Some implications of the findings are discussed.

Summary. Analysis of results of tests of cognitive development in Papua New Guinea children indicated that membership of different language/culture groups was an important source of variance. Three groups each of 48 children were selected from one language culture group and equated for age and sex. Two groups weremade up of school children, equated for school experience; the third group had no school experience. One group of school children was tested in English, the language of the school; the other two groups were tested in the vernacular common to all three groups. Three tasks were used: an equivalence grouping of pictures, a class inclusion test, and conservation of length. All three tests were chosen because there were language differences between English and the vernacular in labelling the components of the task. Significant differences were found between the groups in their performance on the tasks. These differences were related both to amount of school experience and language of testing but the latter was, by far, the more significant.

To realize the promise of the Next Generation Science Standards, educators require new three-dimensional, phenomenon-based curriculum materials. We describe and report on pilot test results from such a resource-Evolution: DNA and the Unity of Life. Designed for the Next Generation Science Standards, this freely available unit was developed for introductory high school biology students. It builds coherent understanding of evolution over the course of seven to 8 weeks. Based around multiple phenomena, it includes core ideas about evolution, as well as pertinent core ideas from heredity. The unit integrates relevant crosscutting concepts as well as practice in analyzing and interpreting skill-level-appropriate data from published research, and constructing evidence-based arguments. We report results from a national pilot test involving 944 grade nine or ten students in 16 teachers' classrooms. Results show statistically significant gains with large effect sizes from pretest to posttest in students' conceptual understanding of evolution and genetics. Students also gained skill in identifying claims, evidence, and reasoning in scientific arguments.

Poor achievers in trades calculations among students of Fitting and Machining had

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