The study's purpose was to examine the contribution of a programmable robot to an intervention program for promoting spatial ability (spatial relations, visual-memory, mental rotation) of preschool children. Eighty-four participants were randomly assigned to three intervention groups: programmable-robot-based intervention, traditional…

Visual Learning Analytics (VLA) uses analytics to monitor and assess educational data by combining visual and automated analysis to provide educational explanations. Such tools could aid teachers in primary and secondary schools in making pedagogical decisions, however, the evidence of their effectiveness and benefits is still limited. With this…

Mother tongue education is accomplished with four basic language skills. These skills are listening, speaking, reading and writing skills. One of the basic skills that increase the vocabulary of the individual is the reading skill. Understanding and comprehension are important in this skill. Understanding of reading is a complicated process. There…

This article explores how creative visual imagination and creative thinking can help children to construct mental models of space. A mixed-method study, integrating quantitative and qualitative approaches and involving 98 five-year-old children (54 girls and 44 boys) demonstrated that creative visual imagination, rather than creative thinking, is…

"In many ways, images are the vehicle of comprehension, thought, and action. We integrate parts of images, we remember images, we manipulate images." This quote from James E. Zull clarifies the rationale for a discussion protocol called Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS), in which teachers focus students' attention on an image and ask…

Prototype work can support the creation of data visualizations throughout the research and development process through paper prototypes with sketching, designed prototypes with graphic design tools, and functional prototypes to explore how the implementation will work. One challenging aspect of data visualization work is coordinating the expertise…

In the context of a 10-day summer camp makerspace experience that employed design-based learning (DBL) strategies, the purpose of this descriptive case study was to better understand the ways in which children use visualization skills to negotiate design as they move back and forth between the world of nondigital design techniques (i.e., drawing,…

The authors offer a new perspective on close reading that uses a range of multimodal texts to capitalize on the visual nature of contemporary society and to support literacy within the academic disciplines. Specifically, a qualitative study explored teachers' perspectives on the use of Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS), a practice borrowed from…

One way that people learn, remember and communicate is visually. We combine past experiences with new visual information to construct meaning. In this study, elementary teachers introduced their students to the peoples and places of the ancient silk routes using illustrations from two children's picture books, "Marco Polo," written by…

Recent research demonstrates that many issues related to the structure of natural numbers and the relationship among numbers are not well grasped by students. In this article, we describe a computer-based learning environment called "Number Worlds" that was designed to support the exploration of elementary number theory concepts by…