Abstracts - Earli

Design-research: Waltzing with an octopusMonique Boekaerts, University of Leiden, NetherlandsIn the past decade, my colleagues and I have been developing the theory of Self-Regulation. At thesame time we wanted to contribute to school innovation and improve classroom practices. Assuch, we set up design experiments that targeted both theory development and classroominnovations. During these years, we constantly felt the tension between wanting to contribute totheory development and advising teachers on how they could help students to improve their selfregulation.In line with design experiments in the US, we defended the view that both these goalscould be achieved concurrently, provided the intervention research is carefully designed. Recently,this view has been challenged (see Phillips and Dolle, 2006) and it is necessary to regroup and joinforces. In my presentation, I will address the question as to whether or not we can achieve bothgoals simultaneously, illustrating how we tried to straddle the divide between achieving gains inclassroom improvement and maintaining high research standards. I will outline what the necessaryand sufficient conditions are for planning design experiments.The educational relevance of cognitive acceleration researchAndreas Demetriou, University of Cyprus, CyprusCognitive acceleration research is connected to cognitive developmental theories. Its aim is toboost and accelerate the ascension of children along a developmental ladder by assisting childrento solidify the concepts and cognitive operations and skills presumably related to their particularphase of cognitive development and lead them to successfully move onto a more advanced level ofcognitive development. Ultimately, this research aims to help children to make full use of theirdevelopmental potential for the sake of learning in domains of science and knowledge that are ofrelevance to school and real life. These experiments started with the research of the Genevans onlearning in the early 70s and they continued with the research of many post-Piagetians, includingShayer and Adey in the UK, Case in the USA and Canada, and our research in Greece and Cyprus.This research showed, in contrast to its influence on education, that cognitive acceleration ispossible, its effects generalize to educationally relevant school subjects, such as mathematics,science, and language, and they last. Unfortunately, however, interest in this research faded awaywith the decrease of interest in cognitive developmental research as such. The presentation willattempt to highlight what has been learned from this research in terms of principles and practicesfor supporting learning and thinking, specify possible epistemological and practical reasons for itsrather limited impact on education, and suggest ways that can make this research able to fertilizecurrent educational research, practice, and policy making.Designing prevention programs in kindergarten: The example of the Würzburg phonologicalawareness training programWolfgang Schneider, University of Würzburg, GermanyFor more than three decades, educational researchers have explored ways to minimize children’srisk to develop reading and spelling problems in school. Based on findings from basicexperimental research, the impact of early phonological information processing abilities was foundto be essential. Consequently, kindergarten training programs were implemented in different partsof the world (Europe, Australia, the US) that helped in improving young children’s phonologicalskills (e.g., their ability to make sense of the sound structure of the spoken language). In mostcases, such intervention approaches were very successful, predicting children’s subsequent readingand spelling performance in elementary school. In this paper, developmental stages in the– 490 –