Solving complex problems is critical to educational leaders' ability to achieve improvement in schools. Much of this problem-solving is carried out in conversations with staff. This paper draws on theories of collaborative problem-solving and interpersonal effectiveness to examine the behavior of leaders in such conversations -- in Norway and New…

This paper explores how authentic assessment can be implemented to enhance opportunities to develop employability skills through problem-solving tasks. Based on the eight key tenets of authentic assessment (Ashford-Rowe, Herrington and Brown, 2014), this paper presents formative and summative assessment case studies which were created in…

Drawing on a concept-map methodology, we investigated how 18 prospective elementary teachers (PSTs) conceptualize STEM thinking as habits of mind shared across STEM domains in the context of problem-solving prior to explicit classroom discussions about STEM thinking. A 28-question, 5-point Likert-scale survey was used to explore PSTs' orientations…

As digital technologies become a commonplace in mathematics classrooms, they transform the ways students and teachers interact with mathematics. Students learn to use a technological tool for solving mathematical tasks through a process known as instrumental genesis. Teachers' support for this process is known as instrumental orchestration. In…

The usefulness of virtual reality (VR) technology in physiology education is largely unexplored. Although VR has the potential to enrich learning experience by enhancing the spatial awareness of students, it is unclear whether VR contributes to active learning of physiology. In the present study, we used a mixed-method research approach to…

Assessing sensitivity to unmeasured confounding is an important step in observational studies, which typically estimate effects under the assumption that all confounders are measured. In this paper, we develop a sensitivity analysis framework for balancing weights estimators, an increasingly popular approach that solves an optimization problem to…

This article reports two primary school teachers' perceptions of the effectiveness of lessons based on a problem-solving intervention. The intervention included enabling and extending prompts, independent student struggle time initially and time to share problem-solving strategies at the end. The intervention had two versions: one included whole…

Using mathematical modelling to solve problems appears in all year levels in the Australian Curriculum: Mathematics (v. 9), and is probably the most authentic way of teaching mathematics in context. However, the term mathematical modelling, even if familiar to teachers, may not be well understood or enacted confidently by teachers in their…

A frequent concern about constructivist instruction is that it works well, mainly for students with higher domain knowledge. We present findings from a set of two quasi-experimental pretest-intervention-posttest studies investigating the relationship between prior math achievement and learning in the context of a specific type of constructivist…

Exchanges of help between children are common and often have positive consequences. But not all help is equally beneficial, for example because some help does not provide an opportunity to practice and develop skills. Here I examine whether young children might perpetuate competence-based inequality by providing incompetent peers with less…

The purpose of this study was to provide recommendations to solve the problem of low teacher retention for the Houston Independent School District (HISD) in Houston, Texas. The problem was that 25% of teachers resigned from HISD (Carpenter, 2019). This makes the teacher retention rate for HISD the lowest among Houston-area school districts at only…

This randomized control treatment study investigated the role of generative paraphrasing interventions on word problem-solving (WPS) accuracy in English language learners (ELL) who were at risk for math difficulties (MD). One hundred and forty-two third-grade monolingual and English language learners were randomly assigned to either an untreated…

This paper sheds light on an intellectual dispute on the purpose of problem-based learning that took place in the 1970s between two major figures in the history of PBL: Howard S Barrows from McMaster University and Henk Schmidt from Maastricht University. Using historical evidence from archive materials, oral history accounts and contemporary…

Several investigations have revealed that students tend to exclude their real-world knowledge when solving simple, routine-like mathematical word problems. The current research is a cross-sectional developmental analysis with students from grade 2 to 10 (N=1346). Other than describing the development (or lack thereof) in students' realistic…

Problem-based learning (PBL) offers a powerful approach to engage students in meaningful learning experiences by connecting classroom content to real-world challenges. This Spotlight explores how PBL can be implemented across K-12 to foster critical thinking, collaboration, and problem-solving skills. From preparing students for the workforce…