A large and growing body of research supports the view that the small-group learning structure can be an effective tool to enhance student performance and encourage innovative problem solving. This paper explains in detail how the framework of the popular television reality show Survivor has been adapted to form a vehicle for a college level group…

Creativity is commonly assessed using divergent thinking tasks, which measure the fluency, flexibility, originality, and elaboration of participant output on a variety of different tasks. This study assesses the degree to which creativity can be identified based on linguistic features of participants' language while completing collaborative…

Measurement is an important component of K-grade 12 mathematics curricula. The concepts of area and perimeter of polygons are first introduced in third grade and serve as the basis for teaching in the upper grades. Without a strong understanding of measurement, students will struggle to meaningfully grasp three-dimensional measurement concepts…

The main objective of this study was improving university students' from different faculties creativity thinking through a creativity education process. The education process took twelve weeks' time. As pretest, Torrance test of creative thinking (TTCT) figural form was used. Participants were 24 university students from different faculties who…

The author shares some examples from her Bulgarian project, "Mathematics Through Experience", which approaches mathematics from a practical, real-life perspective in order to develop creative thinking: just like science! What was most important to her was to motivate her students to study maths and science by giving them a taste of how…

This article describes how our university built a unique classroom environment specifically for active learning. This classroom changed students' experience in the undergraduate executive information technology (IT) management class. Every college graduate should learn to think critically, solve problems, and communicate solutions, but 90% of…

This paper is essentially about the general form of Newton's second law for variable mass problems. We develop a model for describing the motion of the one-dimensional oscillator with a variable mass within the framework of classroom physics. We present a simple numerical procedure for the solution of the equation of motion of the system to…

In this paper we examine a commonly suggested proof construction strategy from the mathematics education literature--that students first produce an informal argument and then use this as a basis for constructing a formal proof. The work of students who produce such informal arguments during proving activities was analyzed to distill three…

This article examines the bicycle as not simply a means of transportation or as an exercise device, but rather as a vehicle for teambuilding and problem solving activities within a physical education curriculum. The activities described in this article focus on bike-centered initiatives that foster creative problem solving. They have universal…

Our aim is to discuss how school mathematical activity is modified when students' everyday situations are brought into the classroom. One illustrative sequence--7th grade classes solving problems that required proportional reasoning--is characterized as a system of interconnected activities within the theoretical perspective of activity theory. We…

The problem-solving process is investigated for five groups of students when solving context-rich problems in an introductory physics course included in an engineering programme. Through transcripts of their conversation, the paths in the problem-solving process have been traced and related to a general problem-solving model. All groups exhibit…

How does one look for mathematical structure? Finding structure is a challenging yet accessible activity for all students. This article describes a lesson in which seventh graders engaged with mathematical structure. The setting was a seventh-grade prealgebra classroom in a suburban school. The classroom teacher was co-author Tatyana Finkelstein.…

It has been theorized that contextual tasks support student engagement and sense making. Yet, contradictory ideas exist about the role of these tasks in lessons, and further research is needed to explore how classroom interactions can help achieve their intended purposes. Through video observation of lessons in three eighth-grade classrooms using…

Context based learning (CBL) is a powerful tool that utilises areas of student interest framed in meaningful contexts to foster development of new skills and understanding. For middle school students, engineering activities that relate to real-world problems provide suitable CBL contexts for acquiring conceptual scientific and mathematical…

"Charm City: Down to 'The Wire?'" is the title of an elective class developed by Sarah Taylor, a teacher at a private school in Baltimore. In the class, students explore their city and social justice issues from a framework that correlates to Westheimer and Kahne's (2004) concept of justice-oriented citizenship. Not only do students…