"The Cognitive Challenges of Effective Teaching," by Chew and Cerbin (2021) outlines a framework of nine cognitive challenges to student learning. The framework can help economic educators better design and describe new ideas for teaching in economics. In this article, the author highlights and expands upon ideas that are particularly…

The authors describe a research-based conceptual framework of how students learn that can guide the design, implementation, and troubleshooting of teaching practice. The framework consists of nine interacting cognitive challenges that teachers need to address to enhance student learning. These challenges include student mental mindset,…

What do we know about how well graduate teaching in economics addresses cognitive challenges to learning? In short, very little. There is a dearth of research that investigates how graduate student, program and professor characteristics, and choices impact graduate student learning and other outcomes. Some of the broader literature on graduate…

The purpose of education is to actualise meaningful learning. Therefore, researching the issues on how students process information and how they configure it is important for meaningful learning. The issue of protein synthesis contains a number of abstract topics and concepts. Hence, it is important in biology teaching to be informed of students'…

This study aims to examine kindergarten children's mental models of the day and night cycle and provide implications for pedagogical practices targeting space science concepts in early childhood classrooms. A total of 46 kindergartners participated in the study, their age ranging from 60 to 75 months, including 22 boys and 24 girls.…

The development of rich, reliable, and robust measures of the composition, structure, and stability of student thinking about core scientific ideas (such as natural selection) remains a complex challenge facing science educators. In their recent article (Nehm & Schonfeld 2008), the authors explored the strengths, weaknesses, and insights provided…

Many studies into learners' ideas in science have reported that aspects of learners' thinking can be represented in terms of entities described in such terms as alternative conceptions or conceptual frameworks, which are considered to describe relatively stable aspects of conceptual knowledge that are represented in the learner's memory and…

This paper draws attention to the literature in the areas of learning, specifically, constructivism, conceptual change and cognitive development. It emphasizes the contribution of such research to our understanding of the learning process. This literature provides guidelines for teachers, at all levels, in their attempt to have their students…

The world presented to our senses is essentially continuous in space and time. The simplest observations of children have shown that we are not born with ways of "breaking up" the world. The structures of our knowledge must be developed, and the major issue this paper considers is how those structures develop. The discussion focuses on Jean…

The science learning cycle developed by Robert Karplus and others in the 1960's has been a useful model for many science teachers and researchers. This model stresses the use of structured inquiry to organize knowledge acquisition and problem solving. Recent research in the cognitive science tradition, however, has shown that learning and problem…

Comments on Flavell's paper (PS 522 962) presented in the same issue. Stresses some of the positive aspects of preschoolers' conception of thinking, and raises questions about the relatively negative portrait of young child's introspective abilities. Discusses evidence of introspection among preschoolers, and underlines the special, and…

Comments on Flavell's paper in this issue. Examines the paper's findings on three different aspects of children's knowledge about thinking: their ability to differentiate thinking from other activities, their awareness that thinking is always going on in people's minds, and their capacity for introspection into their own thinking. Argues that…

Reports results of 14 studies on children's knowledge about thinking. Suggests that preschoolers appear to know that thinking is an internal mental activity that can refer to real or imaginary objects or events. However, preschoolers are poor at determining when a person is and is not thinking. This shortcoming is considerably less evident in…

Describes a study that investigated whether scientific and nonscientific understandings in the same content area are linked. Finds that students' (n=107) explanations indicate that they were using an "if-then" type of reasoning which linked scientific and nonscientific conceptions. Contains 39 references. (Author/WRM)

Analyzes the concept of teaching from various aspects. Reviews research on students' conceptions of natural phenomena, conceptual change, and teacher thinking. Suggests an appropriate conception of teaching science. (YP)