This article proposes that the learning environment matters, and that there are qualitative differences in online versus face-to-face classes. While online education provides some benefits, they also narrow the opportunities for dialectical conflict that thoroughly challenge student thinking, an interaction more likely to be found in real-time…

Understanding complex systems such as ecosystems is difficult for young K-12 students, and students' representations of ecosystems are often limited to nebulously defined relationships between macro-level structural components inherent to the ecosystem in focus (rainforest, desert, pond, etc.) instead of generalizing processes across ecosystems…

Learning Curves has its roots in economics and behavioral psychology. Learning Curves theory has several business applications and is widely used in the industry. As faculty of Operations Management courses, we cover this topic in some depth in the classroom. In this paper, we present some of our teaching methods and material that have helped us…

We analyze how three seventh grade mathematics teachers from a majority Latino/a, linguistically diverse region of Texas taught the same lesson on interpreting graphs of motion as part of the Scaling Up SimCalc study (Roschelle et al., 2010). The students of two of the teachers made strong learning gains as measured by a curriculum-aligned…

Teacher education should incorporate management and leadership training with an emphasis on student audience analysis. Macro perspectives of teaching are needed for a workable approach to the management of education.

This contribution reports about a seven-month long video-based study in two regular Flemish sixth-grade mathematics classrooms. The focus is on teachers' approaches towards problem solving. In our analysis we distinguished between a paradigmatic-oriented (focus on the mathematical structure) and a narrative-oriented (focus on the contextual…

Students (n = 797) from 36 4th-grade classrooms were taught the control of variables strategy for designing experiments. In the instruct condition, classes were taught in an interactive lecture format. In the manipulate condition, students worked in groups to design and run experiments to determine the effects of four variables. In the both…

In this paper I will explore three contrasting teaching and learning environments, including one in which students engage in a "dance of agency". I will move from a consideration of classroom practices to a contention that our work as researchers of mathematics education should pay more attention to teaching practices. Further, that understanding…

In this paper, the following key questions will be examined. What is distinctive about cooperative learning, which makes it different from just groupwork? What has research found about the effectiveness of cooperative learning in promoting thinking? What conditions in cooperative learning help promote thinking? What theoretical perspectives…