One of the most widely used communication tools in evaluation is the logic model. Despite its extensive use, there has been little research into the visualization aspect of the logic model. To assess the impact that design modifications would have on its effectiveness, we applied established visualization principles to revise a program model.…

In contrast to the determinist and non-discrete structure of classical physical concepts, the probabilistic and discrete/quantised structure of quantum physics embeds certain difficulties in deeper understanding and teaching activities. In this study, in order to understand and to teach the concept of quantization more effectively, a clear analogy…

Abstract How do people gather samples of evidence to learn about the world? Adults often prefer to sample evidence from diverse sources--for example, choosing to test a robin and a turkey to find out if something is true of birds in general. Children below age 9, however, often do not consider sample diversity, instead treating non-diverse samples…

"Complex systems" is a general-purpose reasoning scheme, used in a wide range of disciplines to make sense of systems with many similar entities. In this paper, we examine the generality of this approach in learning chemistry. Students' reasoning in chemistry in terms of emergent complex systems is explored for two curricula: a normative…

The importance of reasoning quantitatively is reflected in both mathematics education research and mathematical standards for K-12 students. In this article, we detail how a quantitative reasoning framework can be used to help differentiate two quantities we have found students often struggle with: arc length and the measure of a central angle. We…

This three-year study builds on prior work analyzing students' causal mechanistic explanations about acid-base reactions. Here we extend that work to characterize and investigate how students construct causal mechanistic explanations of simple nucleophilic substitution reactions. After an initial pilot study, we adopted a modified version of the…

Four experiments examined the claims that people can intuitively assess the logical validity of arguments, and that qualitatively different reasoning processes drive intuitive and explicit validity assessments. In each study participants evaluated arguments varying in validity and believability using either deductive criteria (logic task) or via…

The goal of this study was to examine college students' (n = 61) contextualized emotions during in-game actions while playing "Crystal Island," a game-based learning environment where students are tasked with solving the mystery of what illness impacted all island inhabitants. We examined emotions during in-game actions: during book…

We propose the first steps towards a rigorous analysis of the effectiveness of an emerging pedagogy, Computational Thinking. We found that two aspects of the pedagogy have a positive effect with regard to enhancing two cognitive processes, namely sequential thinking and in abstract thinking. Our data was gathered experimentally with a cohort of…

One of the aspects of programming that novices often struggle with is the understanding of abstract concepts, such as variables, loops, expressions, and especially Boolean operations. This paper aims to explore the effects of programming tools with different degrees of embodiment on learning Boolean operations in elementary school. To this end, 67…

Background: Here, I examine the status of 'learning disability' as a basic concept. This kind of questioning may be thought a task for philosophy, or at least for 'theory' or 'disability studies'. Materials and methods: I identify history instead as a discipline well placed to reveal the category errors that surround the concept. Results: These…

Cognitive abilities are essential to children's overall growth; thus, the implementation of early and effective training interventions is a major challenge for developmental psychologists and teachers. This study explores whether an intervention simultaneously operating on fluid reasoning (FR), visuospatial, narrative, and motor abilities could…

While most research on scalar implicature has focused on the lexical scale "some" vs "all," here we investigated an understudied scale formed by two syntactic constructions: categorizations (e.g., "Wilma is a nurse") and comparisons ("Wilma is like a nurse"). An experimental study by Rubio-Fernandez et al.…

Implicit theory (Dweck, 2000) suggests that learners' theories about the malleability of their individual traits (learning style, here) determine the extent to which they can stretch their learning style (Gregersen & MacIntyre, 2014; Young, 2010) and benefit from the instruction that mismatches their preferred styles. The present study aimed…

Analogies and modelling have been developed and applied in learning and teaching science to facilitate students' understanding of abstract concepts, such as atomic structure. Considering few studies focus on comparing the effects of two teaching strategies--analogy-based teaching (ABT) and modelling-based teaching (MBT)--this study aims to compare…