This article addresses the learning paradox, which obliges researchers to explain how cognition can advance from a lower level of reasoning to a higher one. Although the question is at least as old as Plato, two major flaws have inhibited progress in developing solutions: the assumption that learning is an inductive process, and the conflation of…

This essay uses primary source publications from Nazi Germany to explore how anti-Semitism developed and intensified into a genocidal logic. Understanding how this intensification could occur long before the networks of concentration camps or World War II arose could reveal how language paves a path to genocide. Using the concepts of telos and…

This paper presents a thorough literature review of the analogies used to teach chemical equilibrium. The main objective is to compile all the analogies that have been found to be of service to the teacher and the student. Additionally, we categorize and analyze analogies in relation to the following aspects: representation of the dynamic nature…

Education and educational research is shaped by philosophy, psychology, practice, and ever changing educational policies. Previous studies have expressed a need for a relevant and focused research agenda for career and technical education (CTE), workforce development education and career and technical education. A need for a relevant and timely…

Adults' and kindergarten through fourth-grade children's evaluations and explanations of inductive inferences, deductive inferences, and guesses were assessed. Beginning in kindergarten, participants rated deductions as more certain than weak inductions or guesses. Beginning in third grade, deductions were rated as more certain than strong…

Inducing causal relationships from observations is a classic problem in scientific inference, statistics, and machine learning. It is also a central part of human learning, and a task that people perform remarkably well given its notorious difficulties. People can learn causal structure in various settings, from diverse forms of data: observations…

Experts in cognitive domains differ from non-experts in how they represent problems and knowledge, and in their epistemic understandings of tasks in their domain of expertise. This study investigates whether task-specific epistemic understanding also underlies the representation of knowledge on an everyday reasoning task on which the competent…

This study addresses how university teaching as a craft is learnt and developed. More specifically, the analysis examines how beginning university teachers begin to develop and reinforce teaching practices that encourage student learning. A qualitative research approach has been used, looking at two beginning university teachers from different…

The current study analyzed figure size modification in different types of spatial context (C. Lange-Kuttner, 1997, 2004) for sequence and practice effects. Children of 7, 9, and 11 years of age, as well as 17-year-olds, drew figures in a series of ready-made spatial axes systems, which (a) logically increased in dimensional complexity as in child…

This study investigated whether the mere knowledge of the meaning of variables can facilitate inquiry learning processes and outcomes. Fifty-seven college freshmen were randomly allocated to one of three inquiry tasks. The concrete task had familiar variables from which hypotheses about their underlying relations could be inferred. The…

This article describes a hands-on approach to learning proofs by induction. Students create patterns of dominos so that when the first domino is pushed, the entire design collapses, one domino at a time. Students then build designs that do not work. By constructing a list of conditions that ensure a given pattern will collapse, students discover…

Introduction: We present some aspects of a wider investigation (Canadas, 2007), whose main objective is to describe and characterize inductive reasoning used by Spanish students in years 9 and 10 when they work on problems that involved linear and quadratic sequences. Method: We produced a test composed of six problems with different…

The purpose of this study was to examine communication/reasoning, behavioral control, and trust as predictors of resourcefulness among African American children during middle childhood (6-12 years of age). Mothers who practice promotive socialization strategies are more likely to rear children who are socially competent and well adjusted. Multiple…

In his last book, "Toward a Logic of Meanings" (Piaget & Garcia, 1991), Jean Piaget describes how thought can be categorized into a form of propositional logic, a logic of meanings. The intent of this article is to offer this analysis by Piaget as a means to understand the language and teaching of science. Using binary propositions, conjunctions,…

The structure of two-tier testing is such that the first tier consists of a multiple-choice question and the second tier requires justifications for choices of answers made in the first tier. This study aims to evaluate two-tier tasks in "proportion" in terms of students' capacity to write and select justifications and to examine the effect of…