In their recent article on teachers' proportional reasoning, Copur-Gencturk et al. (2022) draw attention to a type of strategy that they call "relative", lodged right between additive and multiplicative thinking. This strategy raised interest in our research team, as it aligned well and helped give stronger meaning to some strategies…

An ability to engage in system thinking is necessary to understand complex problems. While many pre-college students use system modeling tools, there is limited evidence of student reasoning about causal relationships that interact in diverging and converging chains, and how these affect system behavior. A chemistry unit on gas phenomena was…

The purpose of this study is to analyse the effects of the Interactive Learning Materials Triangle (iLMT) on the learning and knowledge retention of 12-year-old students. The iLMT is a digital version of the standard school learning materials in Serbia, and is characterized by a high degree of interactivity and immediate feedback during the…

This study examined preservice mathematics teachers' selective attention and knowledge-based reasoning as they viewed a statistics lesson video. Analysis for this study was based on preservice teachers' written explanations for noteworthy moments they identified when watching the video. Findings indicated that, with regard to the preservice…

Numeric relational reasoning is a foundational mathematical idea for young children and is predictive of future success in mathematics. However, no readily available assessments exist that fully assess relational reasoning in young children. RTI International developed a Relational Reasoning subtask for potential inclusion on the Early Grade…

Logical reasoning is of great societal importance and, as stressed by the twenty-first century skills framework, also seen as a key aspect for the development of critical thinking. This study aims at exploring secondary school students' logical reasoning strategies in formal reasoning and everyday reasoning tasks. With task-based interviews among…

This study was aimed to develop a general argumentation framework for evaluating the quality of causal arguments across scientific and social contexts. We designed a computer-delivered assessment that contains four scenario-based argumentation tasks. Each task asks students to identify relevant evidence from provided data sources and use the…

Attention to mathematical reasoning in curriculum standards is part of an international trend, but identifying and understanding reasoning continues to challenge teachers. We report on one component of an Australia-wide initiative supporting teachers to implement innovative pedagogies. This paper contains insights from design research that focused…

Motivated by often passingly brief textbook discussions of industrial capacitors, this study examines how students make sense of textbook descriptions to create an industrial rolled-up capacitor. A total of 37 junior-year students at a top high school in Beijing, China, participated in the study. The participants followed their textbook guidance…

A growing body of research focuses on what outcomes to assess in makerspaces, and appropriate formats for capturing those outcomes (e.g. reflections, surveys, and portfolios). Linguistic analysis as a data mining technique holds promise for revealing different dimensions of learning exhibited by students in makerspaces. In this study, student…

Inquiry-based science instruction has been advocated for decades. However, the implementation of inquiry teaching and learning in everyday classrooms is rather limited due to various factors. Previous research investigated implementations of inquiry-based teaching at the activity level with self-reported methods. However, little is known about how…

This study aims to investigate the patterns of students' performance in inductive reasoning, scientific reasoning and science motivation at different grade levels. We also examined the interaction of these variables with parental factors in predicting students' STEM achievement. A cross-sectional study assessed 726 participants from the 6th, 8th,…

This study investigates how elementary students were able to construct a human respiratory system model and, in particular, how the process of reasoning contributed to their model through the use of analogy model activities. For this study, modeling activities that included the use of analogy models were designed and implemented. Over 4 class…

Beliefs and problem solving are connected and have been studied in different contexts. One of the common results of previous research is that students tend to prefer algorithmic approaches to mathematical tasks. This study explores Swedish upper secondary school students' beliefs and reasoning when solving non-routine tasks. The results regarding…

The purpose of this study was to investigate eight preservice middle and high school mathematics teachers' solution strategies when solving single and multiple proportion problems. Real-world missing-value word problems were used in an interview setting to collect information about preservice teachers' (PSTs) reasoning about proportional…