Understanding students' participation in collaborative classroom settings is important in a variety of educational contexts, with implications for teaching, research, and equity. Using data from a group-centered developmental mathematics class, this research brief illustrates novel quantitative representations of students' group participation and…

Informed by decades of research and standards-based policies, there has been a growing demand for high-quality teaching and learning in mathematics and science classrooms. Achieving these ambitious goals will not be easy; students' opportunities for learning as shaped by the tasks they are assigned will matter the most. The purpose of this article…

This article extends the literature on 21st-century learning skills needed for workplace success by providing an empirical examination of employers' direct communication to potential employees via job advertisements. Our descriptive analysis of 142,000 job advertisements provides two contributions. First, this is one of the first studies to…

AERA's centennial provides an opportunity to reinvigorate the aspirations that gave rise to our research community in the United States: hope and determination that research can strengthen public education, society's most democratic institution. The first AERAers sought to produce scientific knowledge to improve large, increasingly diverse urban…

This article and my career as an educational researcher are grounded in two fundamental assumptions: (a) that research and practice can and should live in productive synergy, with each enhancing the other, and (b) that research focused on teaching and learning in a particular discipline can, if carefully framed, yield insights that have…

A chasm is growing between our rapidly rising aspirations for our educational systems and what schools can routinely accomplish. Education needs an improvement paradigm--one that recognizes the complexity of the work of education and the wide variability in outcomes that our systems currently produce. This article sketches out such a paradigm. It…

Jeannette Wing's influential article on computational thinking 6 years ago argued for adding this new competency to every child's analytical ability as a vital ingredient of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) learning. What is computational thinking? Why did this article resonate with so many and serve as a rallying cry for…

Replies to Hiebert et al. (1996), who proposed that curriculum and instruction be guided by the basic principle that students problematize their subjects, arguing against the notion of problematizing mathematics. Considers the nature and range of mathematical content pursued in classrooms and the related question of student participation and…

Discusses the problems of using chronometric analysis, a common cognitive psychological method, for educational assessment. Suggests that cognitive assessment has not reached the precision needed to analyze individual differences. (FMW)

Examines whether problem solving, decision making, and other thinking skills depend more on deep expertise in a specialty or on reflective awareness and general strategies. General and specialized knowledge function in close partnership. The partnership's nature and implications for educational practice are explored. (Author/BJV)

Compares Dewey and Vygotsky on three conceptual issues that relate directly to educational processes and goals: the roles of social history, experience/culture, and human inquiry in the educational process. The differences in their approaches are illustrated by examining the educational models of the zone of proximal development and long-term…

Refutes Seymour Papert's premises because they: (1) maintain that computer criticism goes through developmental stages; (2) overlook the fact that the computer's newness in education affects the way people speak of computers; and (3) deny the necessity that teaching LOGO, like other pedagogies, should be accountable to experimental research. (PS)

Agrees with Seymour Papert that conventional experimentation has shortcomings when used to study effects of educational programs. Cites three research methods that, in combination, can compensate for the shortcomings of both conventional research and the computer criticism suggested by Papert. (PS)

Transferring the skills learned in mathematics to other contexts is a problem for many students. A new heuristic model of mathematics instruction is proposed. The model would guard against the adoption of mistaken assumptions about mathematics and foster the learning of problem-solving strategies. (VM)

Discusses anchored instruction, a teaching technique using videodisc-based problem-solving environments, and describes two research projects involving anchored instruction. Argues that anchored instruction provides a way to recreate and improve upon some of the advantages of situated cognition. (FMW)