This study sampled the perception of secondary school teachers on the effectiveness of various methods used to teach Social Studies in secondary schools. It also examined the methods that facilitate learning more, the method commonly used by male and female teachers and also by qualified and non-qualified teachers. The population consisted of all…

This article discusses assessments that can be used to help encourage a collaborative classroom community, in which students help one another learn mathematics. The authors describe participation quizzes and explanation quizzes as assessment tools that encourage students to work together, share specific questions on challenging mathematics…

In an effort to support a solid grounding in educational theory within the field of museum education, three texts considered essential reading for museum educators were surveyed for correlations with Merrill's First Principles of Instruction, an influential work in the field of instructional design. Each of five First Principles were found to be…

Statistical tasks that can be solved in a variety of ways provide rich sites for classroom discourse. Orchestrating such discourse requires careful planning and execution. Five specific practices can help teachers do so. The five practices can be used to structure conversations so that coherent classroom narratives about solutions to tasks may be…

The compound microscope is an important tool in biology, and mastering it requires repetition. Unfortunately, introductory activities for students can be formulaic, and consequently, students are often unengaged and fail to develop the required experience to become proficient in microscopy. To engage students, increase repetition, and develop…

Gesturally controlled information and communication technologies, such as tablet devices, are becoming increasingly popular tools for teaching and learning. Based on the theoretical frameworks of cognitive load and embodied cognition, this study investigated the impact of explicit instructions to trace out elements of tablet-based worked examples…

In this article, the authors discuss a special type of multiplication-and-division-of-fractions problem that elementary school teachers can use to promote children's understanding of fractional quantities and their relationships. These problems are accessible to students working at different levels of fraction understanding, and they can be solved…

"Collective argumentation" occurs when a group works together to arrive at a conclusion (supporting it with evidence). Simplistically, this occurs when students give answers to questions and tell how they arrived at the answer, perhaps prompted by a teacher. But collective argumentation can be much richer, with a focus on the process of…

How can physics teachers help students develop consistent problem solving techniques for both simple and complicated physics problems, such as those that encompass objects undergoing multiple forces (mechanical or electrical) as individually portrayed in free-body diagrams and/or phenomenon involving multiple objects, such as Doppler effect…

Analysis of mathematical notations must consider both syntactical aspects of symbols and the underpinning mathematical concept(s) conveyed. We argue that the construct of "syntax template" provides a theoretical framework to analyse undergraduate mathematics students' written solutions, where we have identified several types of…

In this article, I present and build on the ideas of John Threlfall ("Educational Studies in Mathematics" 50:29-47, 2002) about strategy development in mental mathematics contexts. Focusing on the emergence of strategies rather than on issues of choice or flexibility of choice, I ground these ideas in the enactivist theory of cognition,…

Background: The ability to engage in a creative process to solve a problem or to design a novel artifact is essential to engineering as a profession. Research indicates a need for curricula that enhance students' creative skills in engineering. Purpose: Our purpose was to document current practices in engineering pedagogy with regard to…

This study examined the utility of brief academic assessments to identify effective generalization procedures for individual students. Specifically, the study built on the proposal that brief assessments of antecedent and consequence manipulations can identify the most effective generalization strategy for individual students. The design was an…

An analysis of one-step equations from a cognitive load theory perspective uncovers variation within one-step equations. The complexity of one-step equations arises from the element interactivity across the operational and relational lines. The higher the number of operational and relational lines, the greater the complexity of the equations.…

This paper explores the role examples play in mathematicians' conjecturing activity. While previous research has examined example-related activity during the act of proving, little is known about how examples arise during the formulation of conjectures. Thirteen mathematicians were interviewed as they explored tasks that required the development…