Amidst the ongoing challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic and the collective social movements against systemic racism, an interesting opportunity presented itself for educators in family and consumer sciences (FCS). These two significant and complex scenarios have proven to be relevant avenues for understanding student experiences since the onset of…

In Australia, when a person wants to work in the outdoor education or recreation field, they can follow a number of different pathways to gain the required knowledge, skills and experience. Typically, this involves the completion of a formal program with either a training organisation or a university, depending on the qualification sought.…

The threshold concepts framework provides educators with a useful way of thinking about the struggles students have in coming to know essential, hard to grasp knowledge. A threshold concept is often best understood through reference to eight characteristics that together describe what is critical to effective knowledge acquisition. This conceptual…

The expectation for doctoral research to contribute to knowledge is closely related to examiners' attention to conceptual and theoretical components in the thesis. These components require abstract thinking and familiarity with a number of research ideas that are difficult to teach and learn. We argue that these can be made more accessible to…

In Realistic Mathematics Education (RME), students should reach formal mathematics knowledge and explore mathematics based on their informal knowledge. The problems chosen in the exploration process should apply mathematics to real-life situations and be suitable for students to explore and create mathematical structures. In the current study, the…

Difficulties in understanding evolution are often rooted in early childhood, arising from naïve assumptions and cognitive biases. However, literature reviews mainly focus on school and university students' understanding of evolution, with only limited comprehensive reviews on children in early childhood aged up to 7 years. This systematic review…

This study provides a partial-credit scoring (PCS) approach to awarding students' performance on multiple-choice items in science education. The approach is built on "fundamental ideas," the critical pieces of students' understanding and knowledge to solve science problems. We link each option of the items to several specific fundamental…

Threshold concepts are a widely used idea, particularly in curriculum design and evaluation of student learning. However they can be criticised as being hard to identify, vague and teacher imposed. Using the cognitive theory of Bernard Lonergan we argue that his epistemology enables us to reframe threshold concepts by adding a learner focussed…

The ability to critically access, analyze, evaluate, and create media messages is crucial in the process of becoming an informed and engaged citizen throughout life. Asking critical questions is not only a valuable dimension of media literacy, but also an indispensable aspect of participating in a democracy. Yet, measuring the effectiveness of…

Exploration of "prior art"--the state of a technology's development, as manifested in literature, documentation, and artifacts--has many benefits for engineering students. It expands their understanding of the design problem, reveals a range of possible solutions, and develops research skills important to professional practice. While…

The transition to tertiary level learning requires students take responsibility for their own learning and independently synthesise conceptual knowledge specific to their discipline. We designed an interactive online lesson that aimed to build student engagement and foster self-regulation of understanding for a foundation concept in molecular…

Research on the extent and nature of commonly misunderstood fundamental biomedical concepts across a medical curriculum is scarce. These misunderstandings could point toward robust misconceptions. We examined first whether common misunderstandings persist throughout a medical curriculum, followed by a fine-grained analysis to identify their…

Controlling complexity through the use of abstractions is a critical part of problem solving in programming. Thus, becoming proficient with procedural and data abstraction through the use of user-defined functions is important. Properly using functions for abstraction involves a number of other core concepts, such as parameter passing, scope and…

According to National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM), students must develop a conceptual understanding of place value by second grade to understand that mathematics processes are more than a set of procedural steps. Yet, students with learning disabilities in mathematics typically struggle to understand place value in a deeper,…

Students beginning college chemistry are expected to arrive prepared with fundamental, prerequisite conceptual understanding and skills from high school. While some topics may be reviewed explicitly in the course, prerequisite material-including hidden prerequisites often overlooked by faculty-is typically considered assumed prior knowledge and…