This paper describes an exploratory trial conducted with 14-15 year-old students in English state schools who were studying business start-ups as part of a course in "Business Studies". The intervention uses a "Story Grammar" strategy to improve students' reasoning by increasing the frequency and complexity of their use of…

Educational improvement is at the forefront of ongoing international concern, with the quality of teaching recognised as a crucial variable in this endeavour. While in the past, instructional practices identified as effective were thought to be generic, it has become increasingly clear that the identification of contextually relevant practices is…

Mathematical creativity is rooted in the intellectual abilities and personality traits of each individual, in which the direct influence of education is only moderate. However, education could have more influence on three important components of creativity: expertise, original thinking, and intrinsic motivation, which underlie individual creative…

In this work we examined the content of approximately 950 mathematics questions used in measuring achievement among 4th, 5th and 6th graders in the US in an attempt to determine how the current standardized examinations, which were developed to reflect new national curricular mandates, compared to the old measures used for the same purpose. Using…

(Purpose) The purpose of this paper is to describe visual literacy and an adapted version of Visual Thinking Strategy (VTS) and its value to enhance students' inferential thinking. (Methodology) An example of a middle school VTS, art-integrated lesson is described as well as reflections of a middle school language arts teacher about what she…

In the new global economy, the jobs that exist now might not exist by the time today's students enter the workplace. To succeed in this ever-changing world, students need to be able to think like entrepreneurs: resourceful, flexible, creative, and global. Researcher and Professor Yong Zhao unlocks the secrets to cultivating independent thinkers…

Background: The intellectual context of this essay is the nature of human thought as examined by philosophers and psychologists past and present. Focus of study: The study focuses on the treatment of thinking by John Dewey in his two editions of "How We Think" and by William James in his "Talks to Teachers". Research Design: This is a…

Mindfulness, based on an ancient spiritual practice, is a core quality and way of being that can deepen and enrich the supervision of counselors. This model of mindful supervision incorporates Buddhist and Hindu conceptualizations of the roles of the five elements--space, earth, water, fire, air--as they relate to adhikara or studentship, the…

This article explores dance as a way of knowing, inquiry, embodied understanding and, ultimately, what it can mean to think on one's feet and get one's feet in his/her thinking. It extends dance to include not only the more formal way one thinks of dance but creative movement, improvisation, and ways of moving that are marked by expressivity. This…

Contemporary geography education is mostly based on rational linear thinking skills, such as observation, explanation, interpretation, calculation and analysis. Even field trips--according to many the "heart" of geography--are often organized in a logical, rational manner, in which learners step-by-step improve their understanding of the…

Karina Wilkie discusses functional thinking in the primary classroom. She provides a useful learning progression with sample responses to a growing pattern task.

A rich tradition in developmental psychology explores physical reasoning in infancy. However, no research to date has investigated whether infants can reason about physical objects that behave probabilistically, rather than deterministically. Physical events are often quite variable, in that similar-looking objects can be placed in similar…

Engaging in critical-analytic thinking is essential for knowledge construction and school success. However, little is known about how best to promote such thinking in children and adolescents. Since the research base on promoting critical-analytic thinking is nascent, considering research on fostering skills that could be considered its…

In this paper, we examine a first-year torque and angular acceleration problem to address a possible use of the forelimbs of "Tyrannosaurus rex." A 1/40th-scale model (see Fig. 1) is brought to the classroom to introduce the students to the quandary: given that the forelimbs of "T. rex" were too short to reach its mouth, what…

Phylogenetic trees are widely used visual representations in the biological sciences and the most important visual representations in evolutionary biology. Therefore, phylogenetic trees have also become an important component of biology education. We sought to characterize reasoning used by introductory biology students in interpreting taxa…