University-level physiology courses are considered challenging. Postsecondary instructors indicate the top three reasons that make physiology courses difficult for student are 1) the need for the learner to reason mechanistically, 2) the belief among students that memorization is equal to learning, and 3) the need to think about the physiological…

Among the student ideas about forces discussed in the literature, perhaps the most commonly reported is the notion of an impetus force, or the "belief that there is a force inside a moving object that keeps it going and causes it to have some speed." For example, Clement asked university students taking introductory mechanics to draw a…

Different types of reasoning, such as intuitive, inductive, and deductive, are used in the generalization of figural patterns, as an important part of patterns in school mathematics. It is difficult to demarcate the constructive patterns where the regularity observed in the first few sentences is generalizable to the other sentences and each…

The purpose of this proposed quantitative, ex post facto, comparative study with a pretest-posttest design was to assess gains in overall Critical Thinking (CT) skills, and particularly in the Hypothetical-deductive Reasoning (HDR) skills, for pre-health college students tested before and after a Critical Analyses in Science course they attended…

Mathematical performance plays a vital role in students' academic development. Studies have shown that some basic cognitive processes, including inductive reasoning, are critical for the development of mathematical performance. However, little empirical evidence has been accumulated regarding the association between inductive reasoning and…

In Goffman's terms, qualitative interviews are social encounters with their own realities. Hence, the 'situational critique' holds that interviews cannot produce knowledge about the world beyond these encounters, and that other methods, ethnography in particular, render lived life more accurately. The situational critique cannot be dismissed; yet…

The growing integration of artificial intelligence (AI) dialogue systems within educational and research settings highlights the importance of learning aids. Despite examination of the ethical concerns associated with these technologies, there is a noticeable gap in investigations on how these ethical issues of AI contribute to students'…

When confronted with the ineffable, poets turn to metaphor. Similarly, philosophers of education often employ metaphors and analogies to explain the functions of education (e.g., schools are families, machines, prisons, etc.), and, more specifically, the role of educators. Teachers have been described as prophets, liberators, and midwives, which,…

Mixed methods studies in social sciences are predominantly employed to explore broad, complex, and multifaceted issues and to evaluate policies and interventions. The integration of qualitative and quantitative methods in social sciences most often follows the Peircean pragmatic approach--abductive hypothesis formation followed by deductive and…

This article explores the relationship between argumentation theory and dialogic pedagogy. Arguments made in everyday discourse tend to be enthymematic, i.e., containing implicit premises. Thus, dialogue is often necessary to uncover hidden assumptions. Furthermore, evaluating logical arguments involves dialectical and dialogic processes. We…

The central argument of this article is that abduction as a "mode of inference" is a key element in the nature of scientists' science and should consequently be introduced in school science. Abduction generally understood as generation and selection of hypotheses permits to articulate the classical scientific contexts of discovery and…

In recent years, there has been growing interest in exploring argumentation about socio-scientific issues (SSI) in the classroom to improve students' scientific literacy. Thus, this research aims to investigate how intervention based on argumentation about SSI affects secondary students' patterns of informal reasoning and reasoning quality. The…

The design principles of cognitive load theory and learning by analogy has independently contributed to our understanding why an instruction will or will not work. In an experimental study involving 97 Year 9 Australian students conducted in regular classrooms, we evaluated the effect of the unguided problem-solving approach, worked examples…

Does the mathematics course taught with logical reasoning methods have an effect on the success of students in skill-based questions and what are the students' views on teaching? Based on this problem, it was aimed to examine the effect of the mathematics course taught with logical reasoning methods on the success of students in skill-based…

Design thinking fundamentally relies on abductive reasoning. Diverse thinking types such as divergent thinking, systems thinking, and empathetic thinking have been adopted in design thinking education. Yet, it is very rare to address abductive reasoning to be integrated in a design thinking course because of deductive validity and inductive…