How do learners make sense of what they are learning? In this article, I present a new framework of sense-making based on research investigating the benefits and boundaries of generative learning activities (GLAs). The generative sense-making framework distinguishes among three primary sense-making modes--explaining, visualizing, and…

Mathematical modeling and applications are an important part of curriculum and considered to be important for students' current and future lives. In this contribution, we focus on mathematical modeling from a cognitive prospective. Following embedding the cognitive perspective within the discourse of mathematical modeling, we describe some of the…

Young children learn best through hands-on, authentic experiences that motivates, stimulates and supports their growth in all areas of development. This includes the skills necessary to enhance their literacy and language acquisition, physical and cognitive development in addition to their social-emotional development and approaches to learning.…

We believe that developing cultural competencies can help students learn mathematics and conversely that learning mathematical content can help students learn about themselves and others. Using frameworks introduced by Rendón (2009) and Gutiérrez (2018), we present a five-part bundle of activities for undergraduate differential equations course…

This theoretical reflection implies the main proposal that the activities of planning and teaching are linked; it is the main ingredient to cognition and metacognition. Two main parts make up this article: a theoretical discussion of the linkage, detailing a descriptive letter and content to be taught in the classroom. Within this part, a…

Once upon a time, nonfiction books for children routinely included concise, stodgy writing. Most of the books were text heavy, with just a few scattered images decorating, rather than enhancing, the content and meaning. But nonfiction has changed dramatically over the last two decades, evolving into a new breed of visually dynamic, engaging texts…

Student-centered pedagogy shifts the power dynamics, function of content, role of the educator, responsibility for learning, and purpose of evaluation within the classroom. By redirecting student effort toward self-regulated learning activities within a learning management system (LMS), educators can focus on the application of material during…

Mindfulness is the practice of cultivating attention to foster greater self-awareness and self-knowledge about thoughts, feelings, and sensations, and how they can affect one's actions. It is complementary to other Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) approaches related to positive learning outcomes for pre-K-12 students and educators. This Center…

One of the great challenges interdisciplinary programs face is fguring out how to get students to engage subject matter in a truly integrative way. To accomplish integration, students do not need to become experts in multiple felds, but they do need to understand how multiple modes of thinking, theoretical lenses, and content knowledge can be…

Assessment in physical education has undergone significant changes since in the 1990s. Teachers now place less emphasis on fitness test scores and dressing out, and more on skills and knowledge according to SHAPE America's National Standards for K-12 Physical Education. More teachers are looking into formative assessments, rather than a summative…

In this article, the authors present a brief description of the different views of the "nature of mathematics" (NOM), share a five-point view of NOM that undergirds the teaching profession's guiding documents, and describe ways of providing opportunities for teachers and students to have conversations in the classroom that build…

Many teachers develop oral communication skills through questioning, discussion, Socratic seminars, think-pair-shares, jigsaws, and small-group projects. To these activities the author has added poetry under the auspices of Poetry Out Loud, a national program that asks students to memorize and recite poems. On its website (www.poetryoutloud.org/),…

Working alongside local history teachers to prepare for the new GCSE specifications Steve Illingworth and Emma Manners were struck that many teachers were concerned about two issues in particular: the breadth and depth of knowledge demanded and new forms of assessment, especially the historic environment paper. In this article they show how both…

This paper presents an argument for how second language acquisition (SLA) research should be carried out if a researcher is genuinely interested in learner grammar (i.e., knowledge of language), its acquisition and use. SLA research has expanded greatly over many years and currently spans many subfields, but researchers share one main goal: to…

Personalization is crucial for achieving smart learning environments in different lifelong learning contexts. There is a need to shift from one-size-fits-all systems to personalized learning environments that give control to the learners. Recently, learning analytics (LA) is opening up new opportunities for promoting personalization by providing…