Among the problems identified at Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) colleges, low achievement in mathematical subjects is the most prominent one. This paper documents a qualitative case study undertaken at TVET College in Gauteng with the purpose of exploring the National Certificate Vocational (NC(V)) Level 4 students' errors…

This paper develops a method for the construction and evaluation of cognitive models to support students in their problem-solving skills during robotics in school, aiming to build a basis for an implementation of a tutoring system in the future. Two Wizard-of-Oz studies were conducted, one in the classroom and one in the lab. Based on the…

In this edition of Assessment News, Charles Darr uses a case study from the National Monitoring Study of Student Achievement (NMSSA) to highlight how students can benefit from activating deliberate thinking in assessments. The key message underscores the value of using assessment information to generate insights that inform better teaching and…

In this article, the role of digital feedback that was provided in an outdoor mathematics education setting is taken into consideration. Using the app MathCityMap (2020) in the context of a mathematics trail, the influence of positive and/or negative feedback is examined in relation to how it influences the processes of verification and…

Problem-oriented teaching (POT) activities are important in classroom instruction. The level of student response can be influenced by different teacher behaviours in POT. However, the characteristics of teachers' multimodal behaviours at different levels of response are unclear. This study applied epistemic network analysis to explore the…

Background: Despite the evidence supporting the effectiveness of active learning in undergraduate STEM courses, the adoption of active learning has been slow. One barrier to adoption is instructors' concerns about students' affective and behavioral responses to active learning, especially student resistance. Numerous education researchers have…

This exploratory qualitative study examines teacher candidate and student interactions in response to verbal threats of harm. This study uses existing data: a single set of 16 clinical simulations and four post-simulation debriefing sessions. Participants include eight female and eight male teacher candidates (n = 16) who interact with one of six…

Choosing the right strategy is an important condition to successfully solve math problems. Research studies often present individual types of strategies more or less separately. This study aims to determine student solutions of selected word problems in the whole context of the solution process. In this context, such nonstandard word problems…

STEM education in the early childhood grades is continuing to evolve. This study investigated the responses of children in first grade when they were engaged in STEM lessons throughout one school year. Qualitative data were collected from one classroom of eighteen children and one classroom teacher extracted from student and teacher artifacts,…

Some college students who experience discontent with the instructional experience engage in a complaining and problem-solving behavior called "instructional dissent." Three types of dissent have been identified: rhetorical, expressive, and vengeful. Student perceptions of "instructor power" influence if and how students…

This study explores the use of the Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS), a neuro-fuzzy approach, to analyze the log data of technology-based assessments to extract relevant features of student problem-solving processes, and develop and refine a set of fuzzy logic rules that could be used to interpret student performance. The log data that…

In this paper, we explore the divergent and convergent nature of design feedback and the various responses to this feedback from a group of 24 young novice designers (primary school children age 9-11) taking part in a co-design project. Earlier research emphasizes that feedback can encourage a designer to take divergent as well as convergent paths…

We are three teachers of business English in higher education who have developed a project for our second-year management students to co-create their own video document, exploring a business question. Our intention is to determine whether the complexity of our entire teaching sequence, and more specifically the use of Information and Communication…

Residential field courses are important and should be designed and delivered to maximize their value to students, staff and institutions. In this context, we use a novel approach involving analysis of the daily affective and conative reflections of students immersed in the field course experience to better understand student engagement with…

This paper examines the process of instrumental genesis through which students develop their proficiency in making use of movable points and slider bars--two tools that dynamic mathematics software provides for working with variable coordinates and parameters in the field of functions. The paper analyses students' responses to task sequences…