Research Findings: This study investigated folkbiological concepts that structure children's moral reasoning regarding conservation. Participants (N = 52; 7- and 10-year-olds, gender balanced) were interviewed regarding their values, moral obligations, and rights concerns for endangered and extinct animals. Across the 2 ages, children drew on the…

This article explores some of the common mathematical difficulties that 11- to 16-year-old students experience with respect to their learning of physics. The definition of "understanding" expressed in the article is in the sense of transferability of mathematical skills from topic to topic within physics as well as between the separate…

We conducted a meta-analysis of 31 studies, spanning 30 years, utilizing the WCST in participants with autism. We calculated Cohen's d effect sizes for four measures of performance: sets completed, perseveration, failure-to-maintain-set, and non-perseverative errors. The average weighted effect size ranged from 0.30 to 0.74 for each measure, all…

By taking the role as a mentor and a facilitator, a teacher in the 4th grade of elementary school needs to look at the condition of the students in the concrete thinking stage. Learning process needs to be adjusted such that the abstract objects in mathematics can be represented through concrete objects as a bridge to enter the knowledge that the…

The purpose of this study is to analyze the statistical reasoning levels of preservice elementary school teachers. With this purpose, pre-service teachers consisting of 29 groups worked on a model eliciting activity (MEA) in scope of an elective course they were taking. At the end of the class, they were asked to present their solutions while…

Young children have been taught simple sequences of alternating shapes and colors, referred to as "patterning", for the past half century in the hope that their understanding of pre-algebra and their mathematics achievement would be improved. The evidence that such patterning instruction actually improves children's academic achievement…

This reflection paper argues that the design and development of digital games teach essential 21st century skills. Intrinsic to application and game development is design thinking. Design thinking requires iterative development, which demands creativity, critical thinking and problem solving. Students are engaged through learning by doing in both…

Immigrants bring a wide variety of skills that favor the market productivity and add to the economic life of the country. They contribute to the development of the U.S. economy through the skills they bring to the market (cognitive skills such as abstract thinking, non-cognitive skills such as motivation and initiative, and specific skills such as…

A longstanding debate concerns the use of concrete versus abstract instructional materials, particularly in domains such as mathematics and science. Although decades of research have focused on the advantages and disadvantages of concrete and abstract materials considered independently, we argue for an approach that moves beyond this dichotomy and…

Reconsidering the origin, process, and outcomes of analogy-making suggests practices for environmental educators who strive to disengage humans from the isolating illusions of dichotomizing frameworks. We can view analogies as outcomes of developmental processes within which human subjectivity is but an element, threading our sense of self back…

This article examines Wayne C. Booth's legacy as a teacher and scholar through the concept of rhetoric as mutual inquiry that he develops from "Modern Dogma and the Rhetoric of Assent" (1974) through "The Rhetoric of Rhetoric" (2004). Booth's work connects the political and pedagogical in pragmatic and productive ways…

In the context of joint decision-making, we investigated whether preschoolers alter the informativeness of their justifications depending on the common ground that they share with their partner. Pairs of 3- and 5-year-olds (N = 146) were introduced to a novel animal with unique characteristics (e.g., eating rocks). In the common ground condition,…

This study proposed an analytic framework for coding students' dialogic argumentation and investigated the characteristics of the small-group argumentation pattern observed in modeling-based learning. The participants were 122 second grade high school students in South Korea divided into an experimental and a comparison group. Modeling-based…

According to the National Council of Teacher of Mathematics (NCTM) (2000), K-12 students should be given an opportunity to develop their spatial reasoning abilities. One of the topics that may allow students to develop their spatial skills is forming 3-dimensional objects using spinning and extrusion methods. Also, extrusion and spinning methods…

The mathematical proficiencies in the "Australian Curriculum: Mathematics" of understanding, problem solving, reasoning, and fluency are intended to be entwined actions that work together to build generalised understandings of mathematical concepts. A content analysis identifying the incidence of key proficiency terms (KPTs) embedded in…