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To test the Conceptual Level matching model, the concept of "cognitive dissonance" was taught to groups of high school students, matched for sex and school class, but varying in Conceptual Level (ex.). Treatments varied in structure from low (Example only) to high (Rule-example). It was predicted from the model that low ex. Ss would profit more from increased structure, while high a. Ss would show less effect from treatment variations, but would tend to perform best in low structure. These predictions were clearly supported by a significant CL X Treatment interaction and mean scores in the predicted pattern. * A similar report of these results was presented at the 1970 meeting of the American Educational Research Association. The results of die study are based on a Master's Thesis conducted by the first author and supervised by the second author. We thank the staff and students of the R. S. McLaughlin Vocational Institute, Whitby, Ontario, especially Mrs. Grace Heard, for their cooperation and participation.

The increased use of interviewing in social and educational research has been accompanied and influenced by wide acceptance of a constructivist view of persons in recent social science. The present paper notes major sources of this viewpoint and highlights, amongst its implications for research interviewing, a validity dilemma concerning the relative roles of interviewer and interviewee. Aspects of this issue are illustrated by reference to two contrasting approaches in the recent study of social values. The strategy of hierarchical focusing is proposed as a systematic approach to the resolution of the dilemma. This approach to the design, conduct and analysis of interviews is illustrated in some detail by reference to a recent research application.

Since teaching consists essentially in activity designed to promote learning, it follows that a teaching strategy has the potential in principle to achieve particular kinds of learning gains (LPP) to the extent that it embodies or stimulates the relevant learning processes on the part of learners and enables the teacher's functions of on-line monitoring and assistance for such learning processes. Whether a teaching strategy actually does realize its LPP by way of achieving its intended learning goals depends also on the quality of its implementation, in conjunction with other factors in the situated interaction that teaching always involves. The core role of psychology is to provide well-grounded indication of the nature of such learning processes and the teaching functions that support them, rather than to directly generate particular ways of teaching. A critically eclectic stance towards potential sources of psychological insight is argued for. Applying this framework, the paper proposes five kinds of issue to be attended to in the design and evaluation of psychology-based pedagogy. Other work proposing comparable ideas is briefly reviewed, with particular attention to similarities and a key difference with the ideas of Oser and Baeriswyl (2001).