Constructed responses can be used to assess the complexity of student thinking and can be evaluated using rubrics. The two most typical rubric types used are holistic and analytic. Holistic rubrics may be difficult to use with expert-level reasoning that has additive or overlapping language. In an attempt to unpack complexity in holistic rubrics…

Taking as a point of departure that consciousness of time is pivotal to historical consciousness, this paper explores intuitive temporal experiences as opposed to the less intuitive temporal experience connected with historical consciousness. The intuitive daily/cyclic, social and mythical temporal awareness is being opposed to historical…

Analogies are suitable for teaching scientific concepts by comparing an unknown with a known. For this reason, they are widely used by textbook authors or science teachers for different aims such as introduction, clarification, or discrimination of new concepts. This study examines the analogies used in elementary science textbooks from 3rd to 8th…

The ontologies students use--their conceptions about the nature of entities--impact the way they learn physics and reason through physics problems. We investigate students' capacities for flexible use of ontologies in a modern physics context, focusing on students' reasoning around two quantum entities (photons and electrons) for three canonical…

The impact of retrieval practice on analogical-problem-solving performance was investigated using a complex, educationally relevant task. Participants studied a statistical hypothesis testing scenario and practiced recalling the material or repeatedly studied it. Participants then completed a final test either 5 minutes or 1 week later involving a…

Laboratory experiences are a key and integral part of the chemistry degree that are intended to provide the students the necessary training for laboratory work and improve their scientific reasoning/research abilities and their understanding of the uncertainty in experimental measurements. Despite the unquestionable capacity of hands-on laboratory…

The complexity associated with how interventions result--or fail to result--in outcomes and how context matters is increasingly recognised. Logic models provide an important tool for handling complexity, with contrasting uses in programme evaluation and evidence synthesis. To reconcile these, we developed an approach that combines the strengths of…

Babies think differently than adults, and understanding how they think can help us see their explosive brain growth in everyday behavior. Infants learn language faster than adults do, use statistics to understand how the world works, and even reason about the minds of others. But these achievements can be hidden by their poor self-regulatory…

In this essay, findings from research in science and chemistry education are used to describe and discuss progression in students' structure-property reasoning through schooling. This work provides insights into the challenges that students face to master this important component of chemical thinking. The analysis reveals that student reasoning is…

Visuospatial thinking is considered crucial for understanding of three-dimensional spatial concepts in STEM disciplines. Despite their importance, little is known about the underlying cognitive processing required to spatially reason and the varied strategies students may employ to solve visuospatial problems. This study seeks to identify and…

The present study investigates the effect of three neo-Piagetian constructs, namely Formal Reasoning (FR), Field Dependence/Independence (FDI) and Divergence (DIV), as well as the effect of age and gender, on students' portrayed representations of the atomic structure, considering their degree of coherence. For this purpose students'…

The main aim of this study is to develop a useful, valid, and reliable two-tier proportional reasoning skill test for middle school 7th and 8th-grade students. The research was carried out using the sequential explanatory mixed method. The study group of this research comprised of 391 (n[subscript 7th-grade]=223, n[subscript 8th-grade]=168)…

We report on an exploratory effort to design an interest-based learning experience for high school (step) dancers to engage with concepts in mathematics and data science. We hypothesized that generating and analyzing data from their own dance movement, through motion and audio capture, would: (1) enable learners to form analogies between off-line…

Using a behavioral ethics framework and YouTube video clips, this exercise engages students in a demonstration of how people employ cognitive errors and self-deception to protect their interests when making ethical decisions. This approach helps instructors supplement lessons using normative theories to teach business ethics. Normative theories…

The Lawson's Classroom Test of Scientific Reasoning (LCTSR) is a popular instrument that measures the development of students' scientific reasoning skills. The instrument has a two-tier question design, which has led to multiple ways of scoring and interpretation. In this research, a method of pattern analysis was proposed and applied to analyze…