Democracies expect citizens to engage actively in public life by making decisions about political issues that are frequently ambiguous, with strong moral and emotional implications, and often subject to misinformation and manipulation. Strong critical thinking (CT) appears therefore as a crucial component of a reflective democratic citizenship.…

The current study aims to contribute to the literature on how organic chemistry students weigh various factors when predicting products of substitution and elimination reactions. This study focuses specifically on these mechanism types, as they are often the first instances where students must consider the "how" and the "why"…

pH buffers are used extensively in research and industry making them an important chemistry topic for students to learn. This qualitative study uses the phenomenographic method and a resource theoretical framework to provide the first insights into how students approach conceptual buffer problems. Three scaffolded buffer question sets were…

Decision-making is one of the important skills that must be possessed by students in the 21st century. One of the topics that require the right decision to be made for each challenge and the impact it will cause is climate change which has already occurred. This study aimed to find out how students' decision-making and the importance of improving…

In Victoria, Australia, senior secondary mathematics students are expected to use technology and thus need to make decisions about using pen-and-paper (P&P) or technology when solving mathematics problems. The predominant technology is a Computer Algebra System (CAS). This study investigated the beliefs about CAS held by twelve Year 11…

Despite curriculum expectations, many students, including a disproportionate number of girls, do not 'just know' (retrieve) single-digit addition facts by Year 3. The current study employed structured interviews to explore which strategies Year 3/4 students (n = 166) used when solving more difficult addition combinations. Results revealed that…

Nowadays, many education programmes claim to evolve according to present and future skills needed for sustainable development, and one of these skills is inventive problem-solving. Systematic-inventive problem solving (SIPS) is a systematic approach to problem-solving derived from engineering, technology, science, mathematics, and general…

The purpose of the current study is to qualitatively explore how Thai preservice biology teachers make decisions on, and informally reason about, an agriculture-based socioscientific issue (SSI). The SSI arises mainly as a controversy between two social classes, namely the agricultural and non-agricultural sectors, involving haze pollution.…

Student learning in religious educational settings is subject to the same pedagogical forces, both effective and ineffective, as found in secular settings. Lectures, readings, assignments, testing and other activities associated with typical instruction, while of some value, tend to leave students with knowledge that is mostly fragmented. In this…

School climate surveys are commonly used to solicit youth perspectives about their experiences in schools. However, to move climate surveys from solicitation towards a more youth-centered, partnered practice for school improvement, guidance is needed from the youth themselves about how and in what ways they hope adults respond to their survey…

The purpose of the study is to examine how Industry 4.0, and the digital environment, have together created a new situation for companies and universities in terms of soft skills for employability. While companies aim to introduce a new structure, universities try to align with these changes by developing new educational methods, curricula, and…

In this portfolio, I reflect on my efforts to provide professional development targeted to support teachers during the launch phase of their mathematics teaching, to elicit and respond to student ideas and experiences. I grounded my study in research on ambitious teaching practices for launching complex mathematical tasks using problem-based…

An understanding of how sensemaking unfolds when elementary students engage in engineering design tasks is crucial to advancing engineering teaching and learning at K-12 levels. Sensemaking has been widely studied in the context of science as a discipline. In this paper, we seek to contribute to the more nascent efforts to build theory about the…

The purpose of this study was to examine whether attending camp supported girls' college readiness skills and whether those outcomes persisted after the girls' first semester of college. This study was a multi-year project conducted over three different time periods (first and last day of camp, and after the first semester of college). One hundred…

Background: Computer-based scaffolding has been intensively used to facilitate students' self-regulated learning (SRL). However, most previous studies investigated how computer-based scaffoldings affected the cognitive aspect of SRL, such as knowledge gains and understanding levels. In contrast, more evidence is needed to examine the effects of…