Financial literacy is crucial for making sound financial decisions and living a better life. However, the field of finance is full of abstract concepts, such as inflation, liquidity, asset allocation and credit. Abstract concepts may be harder to comprehend than concrete concepts due to their lack of tangible referents in the physical world. In…

Many educators and professional organizations recommend Quantitative Reasoning as the best entrylevel postsecondary mathematics course for non-STEM majors. However, novice and veteran instructors who have no prior experience in teaching a QR course often express their ignorance of the content to choose for this course, the instruction to offer…

The present study analyses the impact of negotiation processes on activating argumentative resources for decision-making in a socioscientific issue (SSI) in biology classes. The research focuses on the potential of group-based negotiation processes to activate the use of relevant argumentative resources without any prescribed or explicit…

Building scientific arguments is a central ability for all scientists regardless of their specific domain. In organic chemistry, building arguments is a necessary skill to estimate reaction processes in consideration of the reactivities of reaction centres or the chemical and physical properties. Moreover, building arguments for multiple reaction…

Learning progressions (LPs) are novel models for the development of assessments in science education, that often use a scale to categorize students' levels of reasoning. Pictorial representations are important in chemistry teaching and learning, and also in LPs, but the differences between pictorial and verbal items in chemistry LPs is unclear. In…

Abilities in scientific thinking and reasoning have been emphasized as core areas of initiatives, such as the Next Generation Science Standards or the College Board Standards for College Success in Science, which focus on the skills the future will demand of today's students. Although there is rich literature on studies of how these abilities…

This paper explores Computational Thinking (CT) through the experiences and interactions of sixth-grade students as they were engaging in a science lesson utilizing robotics. This robotics unit institutes the shifting from traditional to engaging hands-on activities coupled with CT skills that are exciting, intriguing, and inviting to students.…

The "no-excuses" model of education has become one of the most prominent educational alternatives for urban youth. Recently, notable no-excuses charter schools have begun a concerted effort to develop students' character strengths, striving to increase their chances of future success. In this article, we situate the no-excuses approach…

[This paper is part of the Focused Collection on Curriculum Development: Theory into Design.] Research in physics education has contributed substantively to improvements in the learning and teaching of university physics by informing the development of research-based instructional materials for physics courses. Reports on the design of these…

This research study explored robotics as the catalyst for computational thinking (CT) by sixth-grade students as they are engaged in a science lesson. The interactions, understandings, and applications are discussed, along with the participants' connections and implementations of CT concepts (decomposition, abstraction, pattern recognition, and…

The task of turning undergrads into academics requires teaching them to reason about the world in a more complex way. We present the Argument Complexity Scale, a tool for analysing the complexity of argumentation, based on the Integrative Complexity and Conceptual Complexity Scales from, respectively, political psychology and personality theory.…

Staff developers who have worked intensively with teachers to promote higher order thinking tend to emphasize similar types of training activities, especially involving teachers in higher order thinking and authentic problem solving in their subjects and translating ideas about the teaching of thinking into specific lessons for students.…

This article discusses the feasibility of and the skills needed for teaching basic economic concepts such as supply and demand in an informal learning situation, in this case the simulation of an economic system based on barter. (CJ)

An attempt is made to synthesize the diverse perspectives on the teaching of thinking, especially in the area of social studies. A conception is developed that incorporates major theoretical orientations as well as the views of teachers. The conception emphasizes interpretation, analysis, and manipulation of information to solve problems that…

One of the major goals of the social studies is to help students gain and refine skills in the area of value clarification. Value sheets, carefully planned activities designed to elicit value clarifying patterns of language from students, are one way of securing value clarification. Sheets, planned in conjunction with ongoing units of instruction,…