Enhancing students' analytical thinking skills holds great promise for bolstering a nation's economic growth, fostering a dynamic learning culture, and nurturing human capital development. It is especially critical in today's rapidly changing landscape, where the demand for skilled, adaptable graduates is high. Achieving and sustaining these…

This study examined age-related differences in the effectiveness of two generative learning strategies (GLSs). Twenty-five children aged 9-11 and 25 university students aged 17-29 performed a facts learning task in which they had to generate either a prediction or an example before seeing the correct result. We found a significant Age × Learning…

This is a study of the process of biographical learning and how it can be observed in narration. There have not yet been empirical studies focused explicitly on the learning aspects of biographical learning, as scholars have focused more on the biographical part of the concept -- more on the question of what is learned than of how it is learned.…

Supporting students in building well-grounded explanations plays a crucial role in scientific practice. Research in organic chemistry education on students' mechanistic explanations, however, has revealed various challenges. When solving mechanistic tasks, students experience difficulties when (I) deriving implicit properties from structural…

A physical process analogy of the learning process was studied using a hydraulic method. Detailed educational guidance describing applied pedagogical concepts for technical instructors of the civil, mechanical, chemical and materials engineering disciplines was formulated. A unified engineering-friendly formulation of learning processes using a…

According to Geary's evolutionary approach, humans are able to easily acquire primary knowledge and, with more efforts, secondary knowledge. The present study investigates how primary knowledge contents can facilitate the learning of formal logical rules, i.e., secondary knowledge. Framing formal logical problems in evolutionary salient contexts…

If an organic chemistry student explains that she represents a mechanistic step because ''it's a productive part of the mechanism,'' what meaning could the professor teaching the class attribute to this statement, what is actually communicated, and what does it mean for the student? The professor might think that the explanation is based on…

Refutation texts have been shown to be effective at promoting knowledge revision. It has been suggested that refutation texts are most effective when the misconception and the correct information are co-activated and integrated with causal networks that support the correct information. We explored two augmentations to a refutation text that might…

The Indian Institute of Science is proud to host the fully in-person sixteenth iteration of the International Conference on Educational Data Mining (EDM) during July 11-14, 2023. EDM is the annual flagship conference of the International Educational Data Mining Society. The theme of this year's conference is "Educational data mining for…

The central goal of this study was to characterize the mental models of acids and acid strength expressed by advanced college chemistry students when engaged in prediction, explanation, and justification tasks that asked them to rank chemical compounds based on their relative acid strength. For that purpose we completed a qualitative research…

In the last few decades, analogy, which is considered as a special case for reasoning, has attracted a great deal of attention from cognitive scientists. Although analogy was rarely applied in previous decades, now it is often considered by educators and researchers as a strategy to provide creative solutions and poetic writing (Paris & Glynn,…

Analogous thinking has been commonly discussed as being an inherent and distinguishing characteristic of human cognition (e.g., Gentner, 2010; Goldstone, Day, & Son, 2010; Holyoak, in press; Rittle-Johnson & Star, in press). Gentner (2003) has argued that as part of the human cognitive toolbox, comparison accompanied by the relational language to…

In an experiment using a conditional logic task, subjects were given a set of cards defining a particular conditional relationship. The subjects were required to determine the rule and predict the outcomes of the rule. Rule structure was varied by providing subjects with either a suggested rule, a partial rule, or no rule for each set of cards.…

Accent on Developing Abstract Processes of Thought (ADAPT) is a program designed to promote critical thinking among college students. Based on the theoretical work of Jean Piaget, it attempts to help University of Nebraska freshmen confront problems and follow them through to logical solutions. In its first year, the program's goals were to…

Methods of assessment to determine the nature of undergraduate college learning experiences, which have been developed or modified at Harvard University, are examined. Since the basic research objective was to determine whether change could be measured during the college years, data were gathered from freshmen, seniors, and graduates at…