In order to learn more about student understanding of the structure of proofs, we generated a novel genre of tasks called "Proof Without Claim" (PWC). Our work can be viewed as an extension of Selden and Selden's (1995) construct of "proof framework"; while Selden and Selden discuss how the structure of a proof can be discerned…

An important aspect of executive functioning is the ability to flexibly switch between behavioral rules. This study explored how considering the multidimensionality of objects affects behavioral rule switching in 3-year-old children. In Study 1 (N = 40), children who participated in a brief game separating and aggregating an object's dimensions…

The ability to reason about how things were made is a pervasive aspect of how humans make sense of physical objects. Such reasoning is useful for a range of everyday tasks, from assembling a piece of furniture to making a sandwich and knitting a sweater. What enables people to reason in this way even about novel objects, and how do people draw…

Previous research suggests that preschoolers struggle with understanding abstract relations and with "reasoning by analogy." Four experiments find, in contrast, that 3- and 4-year-olds (N = 168) are surprisingly adept at relational and analogical reasoning within a causal context. In earlier studies preschoolers routinely favored images…

We investigate how students make sense of irrational exponents. The data comprise 32 interviews with university students, which revolved around a task designed to examine students' sensemaking processes involved in predicting and subsequently interpreting the shape of the graph of f(x)=x[superscript square root of 2]. The task design and data…

Background: In scientific inquiry learning, students often have difficulties conducting hypothetical reasoning with multiple intertwined variables. Concept maps have a potential to facilitate complex thinking and reasoning. However, there is little investigation into the content of student-constructed concept maps and its association with inquiry…

Teachers' mathematical knowledge has important consequences for the quality of the learning environment they create for their students to learn mathematics. Yet relatively little is known about how teachers reason proportionally, despite the fact that proportional reasoning is foundational for several mathematics concepts and that ratios and…

Undergraduate research and laboratory experiences provide a wide range of benefits to student learning in science and are integral to imbed authentic research experiences in biology labs. While the benefit of courses with research experience is widely accepted, it can be challenging to measure conceptual research skills in a quick and easily…

Fixation is one of the major obstacles that individuals face in creative idea generation contexts. Several studies have shown that individuals unintentionally tend to fixate to the examples they are shown in a creative ideation task, even when instructed to avoid them. Most of these studies used examples formulated with high level of specificity.…

In this article, the goal is to describe students' mathematical reasoning in the context of different settings of problem-solving tasks. The core of the tasks are real objects, which are presented to the students with the help of photos, a 3D model or in the environment itself. With reference to the experiential learning theory and relations to…

In this paper, we seek to evaluate the extent to which students can follow a deductive reasoning chain when it is presented to them. A great deal of instruction in introductory physics courses is centered on presenting students with a logical argument that starts from first principles and systematically leads to a particular conclusion. This…

Research in Organic Chemistry education has revealed students' challenges in mechanistic reasoning. When solving mechanistic tasks, students tend to focus on explicit surface features, apply fragmented conceptual knowledge, rely on rote-memorization and, hence, often struggle to build well-grounded causal explanations. When taking a resource…

This paper describes the design of an instrument to assess secondary school students' proficiency in structure-property reasoning (SPR). Design criteria for the instrument required that it should be based on a comprehensive model for structure-property reasoning, assess both reproductive and productive use of structure-property reasoning, be…

This study explores learner engagement with Advanced Computational Thinking (ACT) in the New Zealand digital curriculum. "Advanced" in ACT refers to an expansive, transdisciplinary, and future-looking understanding of computational thinking (CT). ACT promotes CT beyond narrow modes of problem-solving (abstraction, algorithmic thinking,…

One of the goals of science education is to help students make sense of the world around them. To that end, it is critical that students understand the central ideas in each discipline like, in chemistry, energy and interactions. These ideas are of particular importance because they are directly related to one another and are relevant across other…