Children normally feel unable or less confident to express their ideas clearly, freely, and critically both orally and in writing when learning a language. Research has demonstrated that children's early exposure to Bloom's Taxonomy levels in stories has a "remarkable power" on them (Dickinson, et al. 2012) and helps develop their…

This article describes a co-taught course that mobilized a Design Thinking approach in the service of creating a prototype for an actual girls' boarding school in Kenya. The goal of the class was to allow students to engage collaboratively with faculty, with their peers, and with experts "on the ground" to develop the various parts of…

In the past few decades, increasing demands have been placed on developing students' autonomy and critical thinking skills. To enhance students' agency in learning, teachers have been encouraged to adopt alternative pedagogical practices. The revamp of pedagogy needs to be reflected in assessment as it is an integral part of instruction.…

Product design and development (PDD) is a current topic of academic and industrial research. Emphasis on innovation and entrepreneurship, as well as design thinking and creativity has been recently pulled together into the teaching and research on PDD. This paper looks into a multidisciplinary setting made up of three similar but independent PDD…

The purpose of this paper is to explore and explain students' achievements in solving context-based gas exercises comprising the macroscopic and submicroscopic levels of chemical concepts. The influence of specific variables, such as interest in learning, formal-reasoning abilities, and visualisation abilities, is a significant factor that should…

While previous research has examined outcomes related to academic rigor, mixed findings have resulted from differing conceptualizations of rigor as well as varying methodological approaches. Defining rigor as those in-class practices and assignments that require students to engage in deep learning and demonstrate cognitive complexity, we use…

A quality teacher education program is rational and streamlined to address specific pedagogical issues. It elucidates the ideas about what constitutes good teaching and the content and scope of course work and practical experiences. Teacher education courses are very much connected to practice as well as theory. High quality teacher training…

The role of teachers is very important for the educational utilization of Computational Thinking (CT) and its integration in education. As with any innovation, CTs' successful integration considerably depends on the perceptions, beliefs and attitudes of the teachers who will be asked to implement it. The study of these characteristics, concerning…

Two teacher educators collaborated with teachers, media designers, and evaluators to utilize a video, an interactive website, and accompanying curriculum to engage middle school students in historical thinking and learning of history content. The resulting multiplatform project, based on a young Frederick Douglass' life, was piloted in three…

Owing to the popularity of tablet computers and smart phones, e-books have become an important medium for both formal and informal learning. However, conventional e-books are mainly designed to provide information in the form of multimedia, implying that students spend most of their time memorizing and comprehending what they read from e-books,…

This article presents the major findings of a longitudinal study on the use of photograph-based assignments to improve higher-order thinking and language skills among second- and fifth-grade students using an intervention framework and a convergent mixed method (quantitative and qualitative) approach. The method promoted oriented study skills for…

Inquiry-based lessons have been demonstrated to improve children's scientific thinking (i.e. reasoning abilities and domain-specific knowledge). Although empirical evidence shows that inquiry-based learning requires instruction, research comes from two approaches that have not been bridged yet: direct instruction of scientific reasoning and…

Developing optimum solutions to engineering problems typically relies on structured and complex thought processes that require evaluation, interpretation and opinion. Well-developed critical thinking (CT) skills are essential for dealing with the multi-dimensional nature of these problems. CT in an engineering context is well reported in teaching…

This thesis examines children's thinking, learning and metacognition when designing their own computer games. The study aims to understand more about what kind of learning takes place, and how it emerges whilst children are authoring their own computer games. The aim is to get an insight into the cognitive processes students exercise that…

"Mathematical Thinking: From Assessment Items to Challenging Tasks" is a compilation of 36 problem-based lessons that encourage students to engage in productive struggle and deep thinking. Its 36 full-length lessons for grades 2-8 are each inspired by an actual test item from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).…