In the mathematics classroom, making sense of story problems can be a challenge for all students. Strategies that promote student discourse offer teachers one way to support their students' sense-making processes. In this article, the authors present a mathematical discourse strategy that was introduced to elementary school teachers during Project…

The group work test is an assessment strategy that promotes higher-order thinking skills for solving context-rich problems. With this format, teachers are able to pose challenging, nuanced questions on a test, while providing the support weaker students need to get started and show their understanding. The test begins with a group discussion…

This paper discusses laboratory activities that can improve the meaningfulness of natural product chemistry course. These laboratory activities can be useful for students from many different disciplines including chemistry, pharmacy, and medicine. Students at the third-year undergraduate level of chemistry education undertake the project to…

Despite the instinctive perception of mass and heat transfer principles in daily life, productive learning in this course continues to be one of the greatest challenges for undergraduate students in chemical engineering. In an effort to enhance student learning in classroom, we initiated an innovative active-learning method titled…

Magic captivates humans because of their innate capacity to be intrigued and a desire to resolve their curiosity. In a mathematics classroom, algorithms akin to magic tricks can be an effective tool to engage students in thinking and problem solving. Tricks that rely on the power of mathematics are especially suitable for students to experience an…

In many scientific contexts, students need to be able to use mathematical knowledge in order to engage in scientific reasoning and problem-solving, and their understanding of scientific concepts relies heavily on their ability to understand and use mathematics in often new or unfamiliar contexts. Not only do science students need high levels of…

One of the "hottest" topics in the educational measurement community in the past decade has been the assessment of 21st century skills. This special issue demonstrates work being performed in this realm. The present article provides a context for the four primary articles that follow and a brief but broad view of some models of 21st…

This article describes a type of professional development focused on students' thinking that occurs in middle school mathematics classrooms. This type of professional development is called "Classroom Embedded" and occurs over one or two days in a classroom with middle school students and their teacher. Teachers actively participate in…

Students engage in proportional reasoning when they use covariance and multiple comparisons. Without rich connections to proportional reasoning, students may develop inadequate understandings of linear relationships and the equations that model them. Teachers can improve students' understanding of linear relationships by focusing on realistic…

Several studies on analogical transfer to algebra word problems have demonstrated that adapting solutions learned from worked examples to nonisomorphic problems of the same type is challenging and that most instructional aids do not alleviate this difficulty. At the same time, various authors have suggested that transfer difficulties sometimes…

Multidisciplinary teams are responsible for identifying reasonable accommodations that mediate the impact of a disability and level the playing field between those with and without disabilities on high-stakes mathematics assessments. However, minimal guidance is provided to teams selecting accommodations. This article provides a decision framework…

Teachers earn credentials at the beginning of their careers, but they learn new skills every day. While teachers are recognized for the time they spend in formal professional development settings, they often do not have the opportunity to demonstrate the full breadth of what they have learned, including in informal contexts. To address this,…

The National College Learning Center Association defines a learning center at institutions of higher education as interactive academic spaces which exist to reinforce and extend student learning in physical and/or virtual environments. A variety of comprehensive support services and programs are offered in these environments to enhance student…

Given the current emphasis on science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education and its key attributes, middle school is an optimal time to implement STEM-based curricula. However, the interdisciplinary and open-ended nature of STEM projects often makes implementation difficult. In this article, we describe a professional development…

The subject of the research is to build methodologies to evaluate the student knowledge by testing. The author points to the importance of feedback about the mastering level in the learning process. Testing is considered as a tool. The object of the study is to create the test system models for defence practice problems. Special attention is paid…