Spatial thinking is important in predicting students' success in STEM fields. However, there is limited knowledge about "how" students learn spatial skills during classroom instruction by using strategies that support their cognition. This dissertation addresses this gap as I explored "spatial sensemaking practices" that…

Quantitative Reasoning (QR) is essential for today's students, yet most higher education institutions have not effectively addressed this issue. This study investigates students' quantitative reasoning in STEM and Non-STEM math pathways using a non-proprietary, NSF grant-funded instrument, the Quantitative Literacy & Reasoning Assessment…

Reaction mechanisms are a core component of organic chemistry. Being able to handle these mechanisms is a central skill for students in this discipline. Diagnosing and fostering mechanistic reasoning is hence an important branch of chemistry education research. When it comes to reasoning about mechanisms, students often experience difficulties…

Research Findings: The present study analyzes whether child factors are linked to variations in teacher cognitive activation (CA) among individual children in math-related activities within Chinese kindergarten classrooms. The findings show that teachers tend to provide direct CA with high concreteness and that child engagement with tasks is…

At the level of classroom practice, forms of teacher thinking are central to local processes of educational change. In the last decade, "reflexivity" has been promoted as a mode of teacher thinking which has the capacity to transform several aspects of teaching practice. The developing interest in reflexivity both emerges from, and seeks…

The lack of research exploring the influence of dynamic visual narratives on inference skills prompted the present study with an aim to profile the inference skills in school children between the ages of 6 years and 9 years 11 months using dynamic visual narratives. A total of 80 participants were considered for the study. An animated story was…

Computational thinking (CT) is an important 21st-century skill. This paper aims at more useful CT assessment. Available evaluation instruments are reviewed; two generally accepted CT evaluation tools are selected for a comprehensive CT assessment: the CTt, a performance test, and the CTS, a self-assessment instrument. The sample comprises 202 high…

In a pandemic era, it is necessary to equip individuals with the ability to make informed decisions about health issues, especially in relation to viruses and vaccines. In order to achieve this goal, science educators need to explore students' decisions and reasoning about vaccination. The aim of the study reported in the paper, therefore, is to…

The aim of the current research is to develop a STEM-based digital classroom learning model based on the 21st-century skills and characteristics of elementary school students. To enable the dissemination of this learning model, further research is needed to determine the effect of the STEM-based digital classroom learning model on the 21st century…

Teacher knowledge is one of the main factors in the quality of mathematics learning. Many mathematics teachers have difficulty using proportional reasoning. Proportional reasoning is one of the essential aspects of the middle school mathematics curriculum to develop students' mathematical thinking. Teachers should realize that developing…

Training preservice teachers as teachers of reading is a complex task, as is reading itself. Preservice teachers need to understand the theory that underpins practice; the cognitive skills and knowledge required to read and the contextual factors that impact beginner readers. This longitudinal, mixed-methods study evaluates the benefits for…

Over the last two decades, a remarkable number of studies have examined the role of engineering education in supporting knowledge and skill building among children. In this paper, we present a synthesis of this literature to evaluate the added value of pre-college engineering design experiences at the elementary level, and ways researchers have…

Echoing the increasing emphasis on STEM literacy, computational thinking has become a national priority in K-12 schools. Scholars have acknowledged abstraction as the keystone of computational thinking. To foster K-12 students' computational thinking and STEM literacy, students' ability to think abstractly should be enhanced. However, the existing…

Reintroducing computer science (CS) education in K-12 schools to promote computational thinking (CT) has attracted significant attention among scholars and educators. Among the several essential components included in CS and CT education, program debugging is an indispensable skill. However, debugging teaching has often been overlooked in K-12…

Today's increasingly rapid technological developments do not only appear in the field of communication but are also needed in education. In the education field, it is expected to instill students with adequate knowledge and critical thinking skills, which are needed for their future. Practicing critical thinking skills can be done with mobile…