Engineering designers often generate multiple concepts to increase novelty and diversity among early solution candidates. Many past studies have focused on creating new concepts "from scratch;" however, designers at every level become fixated on their initial designs and struggle to generate different ideas. In line with prior work on…

This study argues that religious education is uniquely positioned to resist and transcend contemporary dialectics of wonder that serve to diminish, commodify, or instrumentalize the place of wonder in society today. Wonder is traditionally characterized by a sense of importance that accompanies our encounters with mystery. In a world less…

Recent literature emphasises the role of exploration, designerly play, creative thinking, and handling of materials in the beginning years of learning. This paper reports findings from a study involving 24 children (aged 4 to 10 years), where the researchers engaged with four-story contexts (tasks) that had embedded problem scenarios. In response…

Recent research in the field of education studies has raised concerns about anthropocentric discourses and methods regarding materiality. Creating new pedagogical approaches and practices to advance cultural and material understanding is the key objective for scholars and educators. This article demonstrates how the collection of self-taken…

Children (N = 278, 34-71 months, 54% girls) were told which of two figurines turned on a music box and also observed empirical evidence either confirming or conflicting with that testimony. Children were then asked to sort novel figurines according to whether they could make the music box work or not. To see whether children would explore which…

The Cognition and Exploratory Learning in the Digital Age (CELDA) conference focuses on discussing and addressing the challenges pertaining to the evolution of the learning process, the role of pedagogical approaches and the progress of technological innovation, in the context of the digital age. In each edition, CELDA, gathers researchers and…

The quality improvement of human resources in the society 5.0 era in the 21st century is closely related to technology, and one of the ways this can be achieved is by using YouTube. Therefore, this research determined the differences in student cognitive learning outcomes and critical thinking before and after applying the YouTube-assisted…

Broad exploration is often the best way to solve complex problems because the best solution might not come to mind first. Consequently, creative thinking, like simulated annealing, begins with a "hot" exploratory phase of broad solution search and gradually "cools" to exploitation and narrowing the search space. In solving…

How do people use information from others to solve complex problems? Prior work has addressed this question by placing people in social learning situations where the problems they were asked to solve required varying degrees of exploration. This past work uncovered important interactions between groups' "connectivity" and the problem's…

Cognitive load theory has challenged contemporary approaches to teaching by arguing that they are ineffective because of a neglect of the psychology underpinning learning and, specifically, the high demand placed on working memory. This paper challenges the presuppositions involved not only in arguments for guided instruction by those supporting…

Recent voices in creativity research emphasize the vital role that processes of active engagement and interaction play. These distributed, interactivity-based, and ecological accounts critique the reduction of creativity to mental mechanisms and eschew the methodological individualism that underlies this view. Instead, they elevate socio-material…

Computer simulations have become widely available to support geometric learning; however, the type and amount of guidance, as well as the freedom to engage in self-directed learning that should be allowed for children from differential socio-cultural backgrounds, have not yet been clarified. On the basis of the cognitive theory of multimedia…

An equal-armed balance at equilibrium--the bar is horizontal--tips into disequilibrium upon displacing a weight. Equilibrium is restored by reversing that move--putting the weight back where it was, or doing the same on the other side. Piaget adopted the idea of equilibration to describe how the intellect, in relating to the world, develops.…

Exploratory learning depends on several e-learning technologies to enable students to direct their learning. However, the educational search engines of e-learning platforms are inspired by exploratory learning approach. Thus, their search is characterized by learning and investigation. The purpose of this paper is to explore what is considered to…

Learning and performance are not always commensurable. Conditions that maximize performance in the initial learning may not maximize learning in the longer term. I exploit this incommensurability to theoretically and empirically interrogate four possibilities for design: productive success, productive failure, unproductive success, and…