Background: Pre-service teachers (PSTs) training does not equip students with adequate skills and knowledge of geometry to enable them to teach this section of mathematics competently. Inadequate teacher knowledge of transformation geometry, in particular, requires intervention that targets PSTs' faulty reasoning displayed in errors they make.…

In group writing, a group works together to compose a well-written text. Web 2.0 has bolstered web-based group writing among linguistic scholars and language teachers. This research examined the impact of web-based group writing on intermediate-level sophomore students majoring in English in colleges in Saudi Arabia. It considered the students'…

Errors bear the potential to improve knowledge acquisition, provided that learners are able to deal with them in an adaptive and reflexive manner. However, learners experience a host of different--often impeding or maladaptive--emotional and motivational states in the face of academic errors. Research has made few attempts to develop a theory that…

This paper reports on the first stage of a research project still in progress aiming at identifying undergraduate students' difficulties and errors in solving linear algebra problems. Some students' difficulties related to very basic notions of vector space theory are shown and discussed with respect to both Balacheff's theory of conceptions and…

Theories--based on concretizing, assimilation, and structuring--of the use of metaphors in learning are assessed. Each is shown to predict different patterns of inferences and errors in problem solving. An experiment with 43 undergraduates involving college lectures indicated that structuring may provide the most important function of metaphors in…