These proceedings contain papers of the 3rd International Baltic Symposium on Science and Technology Education (BalticSTE2019) held in Šiauliai, Lithuania, June 17-19, 2019. This symposium was organized by the Scientific Methodical Center "Scientia Educologica" in cooperation with the Institute of Education, Šiauliai University. The…

Studies knowledge of young children's partitioning strategies by setting out not only to identify new partitioning strategies, but also to develop taxonomy for classifying young children's partitioning strategies in terms of their abilities. Provides taxonomy utilizing children's informal partitioning strategies as the foundation upon which to…

This research focused on preservice elementary teachers' understanding and reconstruction of understanding about multiplication in the domain of fractions. At the start of the study, 44% of the 50 preservice teachers studied reported that they had a method for reasoning about multiplication with fractions, and 28% were able to describe a situation…

Researchers collected cognitive structure and reflection data from prospective teachers to test whether schemata and reflection, structure, and process were linked. Results indicated a positive correlation between complexity of knowledge structure and reflective ability. The way teachers organized their knowledge of classroom management affected…

Investigated the role of "a priori" ideas in planning experiments and data processing leading to inferences. Thirty-one students (ages 11-13) observed a "combustion/candle in a closed container" experiment and were asked to interpret sets of measurements. Findings, among others, show that children preferentially experiment on…

Examines the place of mental models in the process of knowledge construction, particularly by the relationship between mental models and computer models in that process. Analyzes and discusses children's use of spreadsheets to build their own computer models. Suggests that the process of building models on a computer may provide direct support to…

Sixty elementary students with learning disabilities were interviewed about parallel domains of uncontested and contested knowledge on the topic of space, including questions of morality and questions of empirical law. Students clearly distinguished between uncontested and contested knowledge, suggesting that they are capable of working with…

Investigated the emergence of class and propositional reasoning skills as a function of the developing ability to coordinate increasingly complex negation and affirmation operations with children from grades 1, 3, 5, and 7. Found that children's reasoning follows a logical development sequence and that different groups of items account for…

This review presents a framework that accommodates static and dynamic approaches to comprehension of students' transfer of knowledge and skill. The review focuses on three sets of variables considered fundamental to students' ability to access intellectual resources in potentially relevant situations: knowledge bases, strategies, and dispositions.…

This paper examines research studies that have concluded that elementary school children can learn more difficult and abstract social studies concepts than are taught in the traditional social studies curriculum. Research studies that focus on constraints on cognition, the use of embedded concepts, and understanding knowledge restructuring and…

Explores content or contextual validity of social rule classifications produced by sample of 12-year-old child coders. Analyses of variances revealed that categorization schemes generated by child coders were contextually valid as determined by raters' mean ratings. (Author/RWB)

Describes an exploratory study on the acquisition and use of knowledge representation skills and structures by sixth-graders, supported by a computer-based learning environment. Results indicated that symbolic structures can be taught successfully, and that students using them in the context of instructional tasks perform at the higher band of…

Presents a study in which the conversations of primary school groups were collected in a botanical garden and analyzed for content. The data were examined for the effects of the presence or absence of an adult in the group, age, and the sex of the pupils. (Contains 27 references.) (Author/DDR)

After a review of the literature on cognitive "cause maps" in organizational decision-making, this study describes a midwestern elementary school from the perspective of individual sensemaking, captured through individual cognitive maps of cause-effect relationships. Data were collected with an adaptation of Bougon's (1983) Self-Q…

Investigates the effect of parental separation on the divergent thinking abilities and creativity potential of 116 single- and two-parent family children in grades three through five. Findings indicate a comparable level of divergent thinking between both groups; single-parent children scored significantly higher on creativity potential.…