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Undergraduate and graduate teacher education students in a culturally diverse, urban university consume and construct knowledge as they engage in a Piaget WebQuest and subsequently construct their own Individual WebQuests. The activities involved in these assignments are underpinned by a combination of complementary theoretical frameworks: Cognitive Constructivism, Social Constructivism, Information Processing, and Situated Learning. The chapter describes how all of these theoretical frameworks are applied in the WebQuests. It includes detailed descriptions of how students engage in and create their own WebQuests. Descriptions include details of how scaffolding is used to support students in their work. Scaffolding that occurs during the Piaget WebQuest process sets the stage for creation of Individual WebQuests, while additional scaffolding is provided during the Individual WebQuest creation process. This chapter also emphasizes teaching metacognition in the design and revision of WebQuest requirements and students’ metacognition as they engage in the Piaget WebQuest and create their own Individual WebQuests. The processes of engaging in and creating WebQuests are described and examples of students’ WebQuest authentic products shared with a community of learners are provided. Products include Piaget WebQuest-based quizzes, lesson analyses, handouts, and instructional activity designs. They also include individual WebQuests in a variety of academic subjects. Sharing authentic products in a community of practice reflects situated learning theory. Consuming and constructing knowledge through WebQuests involves a complex synthesis of current theories of learning and instruction which facilitates meaningful learning and transfer.

Over ten thousand years ago the needs of society to be able to account for economic transactions led to the development of accounting tokens made of clay. In a world in which writing and numbering had not emerged, the attributes of the economic transactions had to be represented by shape and size, as well as incised markings. Changes in the accounting system coincided with changes in the social structure and economic advancement.

These tokens were the genesis of writing and numbering. The use of pictographs led to a large variety of signs; finally, when the signs assumed a sound value in addition to the commodity, writing and speech were united. The tokens also provided the necessary seriation and one-one correspondence necessary to develop counting as well as higher cognitive structures.

This article compares the archeological evidence regarding the development of the tokens to the theories and experiments of Piaget, concerning the development of numbering and cognitive structures.

A deeper understanding of cognitive development in the situation of a neither‐nor‐dilemma is the purpose of this paper.

The approach is an evaluation of experimental studies of Montessori, Lewin, Piaget and my own studies of mental development under conditions of neurological and psychological syndromes with the help of von Foerster's mathematical models. Von Foerster suggested the use of specialized knowledge of mathematics and natural sciences – but without their methods of reduction – to solve the hard problems in humanities. One of the hardest problems in humanities is the question: How does a new pattern arise in the mind of an observer? Piaget theoretically influenced von Foerster and agreed with von Foerster's order‐from‐noise model as a principle of explanation for the equilibrium of cognitive structures.

The finding is an improved game‐theoretical simulation of Piaget's equilibrium theory: a remarkableness matrix. This matrix shows the way, in which a new cognitive pattern – or in other words: a new worldview – can arise by the reiteration of always the same experience.

The research implication is a new way of mathematical description of this process.

The practical implications are improvements of educational settings and a basic research for a diagnostic manual for Eigen‐behaviors.

The newness of this paper is the connection of von Foerster's deductive simulation of Eigen‐behavior with Piaget's inductive probability model. The results may be helpful for educators, therapists, psychologists and other researchers in the field of cognitive sciences.

Four examples of physical-knowledge activities are described and analyzed on the basis of Piaget’s theory. These are playful activities like Pick-Up Sticks in which children act on objects mentally and physically to produce a desired effect.

The objective of physical-knowledge activities is to develop children’s logico-mathematical knowledge. Therefore, it is not the activities themselves that are important. What is important is the thinking children do while they play because it is by thinking that children construct logico-mathematical knowledge, and logico-mathematical knowledge serves as the framework for children to construct all knowledge.

Data are presented about the achievement in mathematics of two groups of low-SES first graders who came to school without any number concepts. One group was given physical-knowledge activities during the math hour for half a year instead of math lessons. The other group received traditional math instruction throughout the year. The first group did better in mental arithmetic at the end of the school year, demonstrating the importance of a solid logico-mathematical foundation.

Piaget's basic objective is seen as an attempt to explain how the individual and his evolutionary forbears can collectively gain practical mental‐models of the “real world”—starting ultimately from nothing, and without independent assistance. This paper firstly sets out to clarify Piaget's rather abstract views on this matter by postulating a more detailed mechanistic basis for them, and then interpreting various observations in terms of the hypothetical mechanisms. (This analytical approach is thus primarily intended as a heuristic aid; though it is also shown to be prima facie compatible with some other, non‐Piagetian paradigms.) It is concluded that a useful way of summarizing the process is in terms of the combined operations of preference for “internal closure” within the brain (Internal Coherence or consistency), and preference for “external closure” during interaction with the environment (Pragmatism or experimentation). In the light of this, Part II briefly discusses the views of Tarski, Popper and the Operationalists/Behaviourists concerning the nature of truth and the legitimacy of reductionism into unobservable domains.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the social psychological basis of pathologies, from which result neuroses and behaviours like corruption and sociopathic behaviour. It takes the perspective that social collectives have normative minds and can be explored in terms of their social psychological processes.

Knowledge cybernetics will be used to show how pathologies can develop from the interconnection between such noumenal attributes as ideology and ethics.

Social entities have similar psychological pathologies to individual ones. Piaget's notions of how the mind operates can be applied to corporate personality, and their inability to create and coordinate different perspectives can be seen as an organisational pathology.

The paper is a theoretical construct that explores corruption and sociopathology at a deep conceptual level. It requires elaboration through case examples to provide pragmatic meaning.

The capacity to create a methodology that is able to explore the existence and development of pathologies.

This is the first approach of this type using cybernetics to explore at a high conceptual focus the development of pathologies like corruption and sociopathic behaviour.

Interactive media strategies and digital tools have enabled advertisers to target children with promotional offers and creative appeals.

Based on theories related to metaphors in advertisements, cognitive comprehension by children, promotional appeals, and presentation techniques, the research for this study comprised a content analysis of 1,980 online banner advertisements with reference to use of metaphors, promotional appeals, creative content, and selling techniques.

The research study concludes that online advertising to children, in contrast to traditional advertising vehicles, is characterized by (a) a vibrant visual metaphor, (b) surfeit of animated content, (c) interactive features, (d) myriad product types, and (e) creative content for a mixed audience of adults and children.

This study argues that the impact and content of the Internet as a new advertising medium are distinctly different from traditional characteristics of television and print.