Four experiments are reported in which subjects gained extensive experience with artificial grammars in explicit and implicit processing tasks. Results indicated that (a) implicit processing was sufficient for learning a finite state grammar but was inadequate for learning another type of grammar based on logical rules, (b) Subjects were able to communicate some of their implicit knowledge of the grammars to another person, (c) Consistent with rule induction but not memory array models of learning, verbal protocols indicated there was no tendency to converge on the same set of cues used to identify valid strings, (d) A synergistic learning effect occurred when both implicit and explicit processing tasks were used in the grammar based on logical rules but not in the finite state grammar. A theoretical framework is proposed in which implicit learning is conceptualized as an automatic, memory-based mechanism for detecting patterns of family resemblance among exemplars.

Four experiments in which subjects learned to control two versions of a complex simulated process control task show that verbalizable knowledge of procedures used to perform these tasks is very limited and is acquired late in learning. Individual learning curves associated with these tasks showed sudden improvements in performance, which were not accompanied by a similar increase in verbalizable knowledge. It was also found that verbal instructions consisting of exemplar memorization, strategies for rule induction, simple heuristics, and experts’ instructions were all effective in enhancing novice subjects’ performance. A theoretical framework is proposed in which subjects draw on two separate but interacting knowledge structures to perform these tasks. One knowledge structure is based on memory for past experiences (close analogies), and the other is based on one's current mental model of the task. Implicit sets of competing rules that control response selection are derived from both sources of knowledge. It is suggested that dissociations between task performance and verbalizing occur because memory-based processing tends to have more control over response selection because of its greater specificity, whereas a mental model tends to be the preferred mode for verbal reporting because of its greater accessibility.

Multiculturalists have recently raised a number of important challenges to the school curriculum, including whose knowledge are we teaching? and who benefits and loses by existing approaches to the curriculum? In this article we examine a number of issues in this debate that are of primary importance to science educators. These issues include: (1) problems with the universalist account of the nature of science that has been the most powerful defense against multiculturalism; (2) an examination of some historical cases that illuminate the consequences of maintaining a universalist perspective on science; and (3) an argument for a multicultural perspective on scientific knowledge. These issues are examined in the context of a national science education reform in which there is considerable consensus that the science curriculum should include teaching about the nature of science. We argue that the nature of science taught in school should reflect a multicultural perspective on scientific knowledge. © 1994 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

We contend that science education should be multicultural. We do not believe a universalist view of science is either compatible with a multicultural approach or fully coherent as a foundation for the science curriculum. We begin by summarizing the case for a universalist approach to science education. We then show weaknesses of universalism in accounting for the following: 1. the limits of human cognitive capabilities in constraining what we can understand about nature; 2. a description of reality as a flux; 3. the disunity of science and the role of culturally different forms and social organization of research in shaping the cognitive content of the sciences. We argue that it would be valuable for students to understand the nature of the debates regarding multicultural and universalist perspectives on science. For example, what questions is contemporary molecular biology good at answering? What kinds of problems do other sciences solve? What historical conditions may explain why western sciences arose primarily out of Western European culture rather than elsewhere in the world? How do other belief systems (e.g., religion) interact with indigenous sciences, Chinese science, and Western science? © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Sci Ed 85:35–49, 2001.

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