Students in higher education have been shown to have difficulties in developing their critical thinking skills, such as analysis and problem solving, reasoning and argumentation. Open-ended tasks offer opportunities for students to develop their own interpretations of various sources, to critically analyse domain-specific knowledge and utilize…

The present study investigated the extent to which 18 dyads in 5th and 6th grade, who experienced low levels of social challenge, differed from 12 dyads who experience high levels of social challenge in terms of the quality of their written assignment, as well as the frequency and sequential pattern of their cognitive, metacognitive, relational,…

Selective sustained attention is vital for higher order cognition. Although endogenous and exogenous factors influence selective sustained attention, assessment of the degree to which these factors influence performance and learning is often challenging. We report findings from the Track-It task, a paradigm that aims to assess the contribution of…

Students approach learning in different ways, depending on the experienced learning situation. A deep approach is geared toward long-term retention and conceptual change while a surface approach focuses on quickly acquiring knowledge for immediate use. These approaches ultimately affect the students' academic outcomes. This study takes a…

This article seeks to substantiate the need for the prognostic assessment of the degree to which school students are prepared to master new types of activity, which underlie their design of an individual learning route at an appropriate senior stage of learning. The authors discuss the concept of project competence as an integral characteristic of…

Approaches to standards, curriculum development, and pedagogy are remarkably diverse; however, recent years have seen a growing movement to base each of these on learning trajectories. In this paper, I discuss and compare the various terms and conceptions of this construct, present our definition, differentiate between our conception and that of…

Presents guidelines for social studies teachers and a sample writing assignment to encourage student's developmental writing. Suggests that students emphasize the significance of the writer's ideas and information rather than the information itself. Establishes the relationship between thinking processes and writing and the need to break these…

Outlines a procedure for teaching writing which helps students learn the content and thinking skills necessary for the reasoning and learning tasks required in the social studies. Sample lessons in a secondary American History course involve students in discussing, reading, problem solving, and synthesizing information. (KC)

These proceedings contain the papers of the IADIS International Conference on Cognition and Exploratory Learning in the Digital Age (CELDA 2013), October 22-24, 2013, which has been organized by the International Association for Development of the Information Society (IADIS), co-organized by The University of North Texas (UNT), sponsored by the…