Socio-scientific issues (SSI) instruction positions the understanding and practice of science in the context of issues that are informed by science but require reasoning about their societal dimensions to respond to those issues effectively. For this reason, instruction in the context of SSI has been considered the gateway to contemporary visions…

The nurturing of learners' ways of knowing is vital for supporting their intellectual growth and their participation in democratic knowledge societies. This paper traces the development of two interrelated theoretical frameworks that describe the nature of learners' epistemic thinking and performance and how education can support epistemic growth:…

In this symposium, the author comments on an article written about critical thinking in economics. The author leans toward the view that undergraduate economics should continue to be focused around core tenets and basic models--what the article refers to as little-think critical thinking--while, at the same time, students should be given clear…

When a population exhibits collective cognitive alignment, such that group members tend to perceive, remember, and reproduce information in similar ways, the features of socially transmitted variants (i.e., artifacts, behaviors) may converge over time towards culture-specific equilibria points, often called cultural attractors. Because cognition…

The goal of this paper is to share an analytic framework for understanding Students? Ways of Thinking (SWoT) in STEM-rich learning environments. Before revealing our refined coding framework, we detail the nature of our collaborations and the various analytic decisions that led to its formation. These collaborations supported our collective…

As biological science rapidly generates new knowledge and novel approaches to address increasingly complex and integrative questions, biology educators face the challenge of teaching the next generation of biologists and citizens the skills and knowledge to enable them to keep pace with a dynamic field. Fundamentally, biology is the science of…

Computational modeling and thinking skill sets were previously relegated to computer scientists and programmers. As a result, computational tools are largely unfamiliar to K-12 science teachers and students. Using Mathematical and Computational Thinking and Developing and Using Models were included in the "Next Generation Science…

This paper outlines the potential gains for Constructionist research and praxis in modelling that might be obtained by recognising the power of the Patch--a humble computational being in the NetLogo modelling environment that has been overshadowed by its more popular fellow agent, the Turtle. To contextualise this opportunity, I describe how…

In this article, we address a call by Thompson and Carlson to directly contribute to defining the variation of students' reasoning about varying quantities. We show that students as young as in sixth grade can engage in complex forms of reasoning about multiple quantities in contexts that involve exploring science phenomena using interactive…

This article describes a "straight-A" model of the creative process. It characterizes the creative process in five overlapping phases, with the variables most affecting those phases characterized as: (1) activators, (2) abilities, (3) amplifiers, (4) appeal to audience, and (5) assessment by audience. The creative process does not…

A textbook model of a contagious disease, the dynamics of which are represented by the SIS epidemic model with saturating treatment, is considered. I show that this model, as originally formulated, is not dimensionally consistent. The model can be fixed by including a dimensional constant [alpha] of value one (with units individuals[superscript…

In the context of a rapid digital transformation, digital competence is now regarded as a fourth cultural skill complementing reading, writing, and arithmetic. We argue that a well-structured and sound competence model is needed as a shared foundation for learning, teaching, pedagogical diagnostics and evaluative schemes in the school system.…

In carrying out surveys involving sensitive characteristics, randomized response models have been considered among the best techniques since they provide the maximum privacy protection to the respondents and procure honest responses. Over the years, researchers have carried out studies on the estimation of proportions of the population possessing…

Teachers use instructional design to solve problems and creatively develop and implement various concepts, theories, and techniques to design and manage the elements of teaching and learning and assess learning outcomes that are generally accepted according to Bloom's taxonomy, in which the cognitive domains of lower-order thinking connect to…

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…