In the last 50 years, research in psychology has informed educational practice, and recently educational neuroscience has also become a source of research-based guidance on education. The authors discuss four significant examples of how combining findings from psychology and neuroscience gives us insight into which approaches are most effective in…

The purpose of education is to actualise meaningful learning. Therefore, researching the issues on how students process information and how they configure it is important for meaningful learning. The issue of protein synthesis contains a number of abstract topics and concepts. Hence, it is important in biology teaching to be informed of students'…

A common drawback in traditional language education is that all students in the same class use the same content. Since students may have different backgrounds such as prior knowledge and learning speed, one single curriculum may not be able to accommodate every student. Unfortunately, most students cannot afford personalized language learning,…

In order to develop an expert-like mental model of complex systems, causal reasoning is essential. This study examines the differences between forward and backward instructional strategies in terms of efficiency, students' learning and progression of their mental models of the electronic transport chain in an undergraduate metabolism course…

This article develops the concept-mapping method as a tool for enhancing teaching quality in higher education. In particular, it describes how concept mapping can be used to transform abstract knowledge and understanding into concrete visual representations that are amenable to comparison and measurement. The article describes four important uses…

Seeking more effective mathematics instruction, this author decided to incorporate Cognitively Guided Instruction (CGI) into first-grade classroom lessons. Students in CGI mathematics classrooms are prompted to use their prior knowledge to solve new problems, establish cognitive structures to which new learning can be connected, and be driven by…

Compared to other subjects, the typical introductory programming (CS1) course has higher than usual rates of both failing and high grades, creating a characteristic bimodal grade distribution. In this article, I explore two possible explanations. The conventional explanation has been that learners naturally fall into populations of programmers and…

The purpose of this review is to provide educational practitioners with a brief overview of cognitive load theory (CLT) and its major implications for learning. To achieve this objective, the article includes a short description of human cognitive architecture as conceived by cognitive load theorists. Following this overview, the article provides…

Visual representations are essential for communicating ideas in the science classroom; however, the design of such representations is not always beneficial for learners. This paper presents instructional design considerations providing empirical evidence and integrating theoretical concepts related to cognitive load. Learners have a limited…

In the present article, we argue that the conceptual change approach to learning can apply in the case of mathematics, taking into consideration the particular nature of mathematical knowledge and the neurobiological bases of mathematical cognition. In the empirical study that is reported in this article, we investigated ninth graders'…

Evidence for the superiority of guided instruction is explained in the context of our knowledge of human cognitive architecture, expert-novice differences, and cognitive load. Although unguided or minimally guided instructional approaches are very popular and intuitively appealing, the point is made that these approaches ignore both the structures…

This paper attempts to create a vision of what it would be like to teach for understanding, to adopt the view of learner as constructor of his or her own understanding, and to share in the creation of an environment for reconstructing students' understanding and reasoning. Such a program is based on assumptions about the cognition of learners,…

The IADIS CELDA 2012 Conference intention was to address the main issues concerned with evolving learning processes and supporting pedagogies and applications in the digital age. There had been advances in both cognitive psychology and computing that have affected the educational arena. The convergence of these two disciplines is increasing at a…