The geosciences consist of multiple disciplines including geology, oceanography, and atmospheric science. Significant work expended to understand spatial thinking skills important to teaching and learning geology has advanced our ability to support students in geology courses and to achieve increased student success, retention, and diversity in…

James J. Cochran is Professor of Applied Statistics, Rogers-Spivey Faculty Fellow, and Associate Dean for Research in the Culverhouse College of Commerce at the University of Alabama. He is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association and of Institute for Operations Research and Management Sciences. He is also a recipient of the INFORMS Prize…

In this reply to Salverda (2016), we address a critique of the claims made in our recent study of real-time processing of American Sign Language (ASL) signs using a novel visual world eye-tracking paradigm (Lieberman, Borovsky, Hatrak, & Mayberry, 2015). Salverda asserts that our data do not support our conclusion that native signers and…

In this media-saturated society, students need to think more critically about the media they encounter and that they are producing. Through filmmaking, students can link geographic theory and the real world, bridging the distance from readings/lectures/discussions to the geography on the ground, making the abstract concrete. But constructing films…

Stored representations of experiences of forces in actions on objects enter into perceptual interpretations and mental simulations of object motions and interactions. In reply to the comment of Hubbard (2012), I clarify some ambiguities in my account (White, 2012) and correct some poor choices of expression. In addition, I address substantive…

As Paul Newton so ably demonstrates, the concept of validity is both important and problematic. Over the last several decades, a consensus definition of validity has emerged; the current edition of "Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing" notes, "Validity refers to the degree to which evidence and theory support the interpretations of…

Susan M. Fulgham and Michael F. Shaughnessy, Contributing Editors for this journal, present their interview with Marcia C. Linn, Professor of Development and Cognition, specializing in education in mathematics, science, and technology, in the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley. Linn is currently investigating…

Cognitive science research shows that the brain has two systems for processing visual information, one specialized for spatial information such as position, orientation, and trajectory, and the other specialized for information used to identify objects, such as color, shape and texture. Some individuals seem to be more facile with the spatial…

The attention to the visualization of education policy is an area of study yet to be developed and explored. This paper extends the scholarship of "mediated education policy production" by developing a visual methodology to analyse a visual education policy document that takes the form of a documentary titled "Learning…

Inscriptions play a critical role in the creation and communication of scientific knowledge, yet are afforded little status in traditional science education research and practice. In the vast majority of science classrooms, K-12 and university alike, inscriptions are treated as transparent, unproblematic illustrations of the "content" rather than…

American Indian cultures tend to be right hemispheric because of the ways in which they acquire knowledge. Over the thousands of years that American Indian peoples have lived in this hemisphere, strong visual rhetorics were developed, because of this tendency to engage in visual thinking and the socioeconomic need to communicate with others who…

The author is an associate professor of animal studies at Colorado State University, but experienced learning difficulties in high school due to her place on the autism-Asperger's spectrum. She had uneven skills, and while algebra was impossible, she did well in courses in which she could use her visual-thinking and associative-thinking skills.…