Problem-based learning (PBL) has a history of producing strong educational results in engineering; however, global society is challenged by highly complex environmental, socio-political and technical problems summarised in the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This obliges us to explore educational approaches that address complexity. Yet,…

This chapter examines the various cognitive tools embedded in a multimedia-enriched PBL environment for middle school science known as "Alien Rescue" and shares the research findings of the use of these cognitive tools in assisting young learners' problem solving. The goal of this chapter is to illustrate strategies for designing…

The aim of this action research was to explore the benefits of group work as a tool for engaging students with introductory material. It was the researcher's expectation that group work, would provide a means of reducing cognitive load (Kirschner, Sweller & Clark, 2006) and encouraging on task behaviour (Wentzel & Watkins, 2002). This would result…

Problem-based learning (PBL) is an instructional model that assumes the centrality of problems to learning. Research on PBL has focused on student learning, student roles, tutor roles, problem design, and technology use (Hung, Jonassen, & Liu, 2008), but little attention in the PBL literature has been paid to the nature of the problems that…

This study aimed to investigate children's performance and perception of problem difficulty in solving everyday mathematical problems with familiar versus unfamiliar contexts. In addition, the ways that children identify the similarities in problem-solving approaches between problem settings and everyday shopping were also examined. Forty-eight…