Epistemic beliefs, epistemic cognitions, and self-regulation processes have a significant role in students' learning. Through this study, I investigated the role of mechanical engineering students' epistemic beliefs and epistemic cognitions involved in self-regulation processes while working on tasks with different difficulty levels. In this…

In this paper, we extend our previous work on challenges teachers face when engaging with proportional reasoning contexts to investigate two contexts that included four problems for middle grades teachers to solve as well as eight student solutions. Analysis included coding for correct solving of the problem as well as making sense of and…

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of cognitive strategies and metacognitive functions of students with learning disabilities (LD), students with low-achieving (LA), and students with average-achieving (AA) over their math problem-solving performance. The study sample consisted of 150 students with 50 students from each group.…

We introduce a template to (i) scaffold the problem solving process for students in the physics 1 course, and (ii) serve as a generic rubric for measuring how expertlike students are in their problem solving. This template is based on empirical studies of the problem solving practices of expert scientists and engineers, unlike most existing…

The purpose of the study is to reveal the elementary mathematics student teachers' difficulties encountered in the solution of a modelling problem, the strategies to overcome those difficulties and whether the strategies worked or not. Nineteen student teachers solved the modelling problem in their four or five-person groups, and the video records…

This paper describes the results of a qualitative study using ground theory to investigate the different approaches used by chemists when answering open-ended problems. The study involved undergraduate, industrialist and academic participants who individually answered three open-ended problems using a think aloud protocol. Open-ended problems are…

Empirical evidence on the way in which expert designers from different domains cognitively connect their internal processes with external resources is presented in the context of an extended cognition model. The article focuses briefly on the main trends in the extended design cognition theory and in particular on recent trends in information…

We conducted a qualitative research of case studies based on think-aloud protocols. The aim was to carry out in-depth analyse secondary students' cognitive difficulties appearing in early stages of transfer processes in problem-solving. The task was to relate several source problems to a target problem, in order to solve it effectively. Source and…

Technology-rich learning environments (TREs) provide opportunities for learners to engage in complex interactions involving a multitude of cognitive, metacognitive, and affective states. Understanding learners' distinct learning progressions in TREs demand inquiry approaches that employ well-conceived theoretical accounts of these multiple facets.…

The goal of this study was to explore the educational potential of Minecraft. This project was conducted with 118 elementary-school students from Canada during the 2016-2017 school year. To explore the educational potential of Minecraft on the students, we designed a "Minecraft challenge" for students. 10 game levels of ascending…

Context-based learning approaches have been implemented in school science over the last 40 years as a way to enhance students' interest in, as well as learning outcomes from, science. Contexts are used to connect science with the students' lives and to provide a frame in which concepts can be learned and applied on a…

This study investigates problem-solving difficulties of novices in a classroom setting, using a German instructional tool, the Fischertechnik kit of approximately 400 parts. In order to analyse the students' thinking processes as they solved the problems, verbal protocol analysis (VPA) was used to record the students'' thinking processes and…

This thesis explores the role of multiple representations in introductory physics students' problem solving performance through several investigations. Representations can help students focus on the conceptual aspects of physics and play a major role in effective problem solving. Diagrammatic representations can play a particularly important role…

We present a quantitative model for predicting the level of difficulty subjects will experience with specific problems. The model explicitly accounts for the number of subproblems a problem can be broken into and the difficultly of each subproblem. Although the model builds on previously published models, it is uniquely suited for blending with…

Gestalt psychologists proposed two distinct learning mechanisms. Associative learning occurs gradually through the repeated co-occurrence of external stimuli or memories. Insight learning occurs suddenly when people discover new relationships within their prior knowledge as a result of reasoning or problem solving processes that re-organize or…