This paper analyses a set of widely held beliefs concerning our understanding and teaching of critical thinking, a notion which is increasingly adopted by universities as their main educational goal. Existing scholarship on critical thinking throws up a vast heterogeneous collection of definitions of critical thinking. I propose a…

The rapid growth of the user experience (UX) field has brought efforts to meet the increasing demand for specialists by welcoming professionals from diverse disciplines, including industrial design (ID). UX field offers ID graduates extended professional possibilities, potentially appeasing the challenging conditions of the ID job market in…

This paper exploring the impact of the utilization of Design Thinking tool in facilitating the development of a group of design undergraduates' creativity skills and motivation to think creatively. This study used a qualitative approach based on open-ended face-to-face interviews. A group of 55 design undergraduates from a Malaysian university was…

Following on from the already wide-ranging academic discussion about fostering critical thinking in students as an important component of a university's educational mission, this paper takes a particular look at didactic principles for fostering this critical thinking. We begin with a reception of Abrami et al.'s (2015) comprehensive meta-study of…

David Clarke's research has shifted the focus of classroom research in mathematics education from study of cultural patterns to study of patterns of participation and the learning that can result in highly complex social environments. His Complementary Accounts Methodology which informed the Learner's Perspective Study design included multi-source…

This article discusses a design contest where students can submit new technology designs and be judged for their creativity and unique ideas. Design contests are a wonderful way to stimulate creativity and build student confidence. In this article the author explores some of the issues of importance involved in designing and launching such a…

Recorded lectures have rapidly gained momentum in teaching and learning, whether online or "offline" in traditional face-to-face classrooms. We appreciate the remarkable accessibility and flexibility brought by recorded lectures, but we must ponder its adequacy and effectiveness. After all, a YouTube recording is different from a live…

Variation theory, which is a theory of learning developed by Marton and others, has quickly become popular in education research. Our purpose of this paper is to articulate the application of variation theory in the form of a number of concrete design principles that offer prescriptive and practical guidelines for improving the designs of…

For many decades, the healthcare sector has been playing catchup with other industries in terms of innovation, primarily due to the low number of healthcare professionals with innovation and entrepreneurship skills in the workplace. The lack of innovation skills, particularly among pharmacists, may result from the fact that innovation and…

This article addresses the debate on pre-evaluative choices of impact depictions and the forms of responses between applicants and funders. By adopting a reflexive perspective on the social impact of social sciences, this article explores researchers' vocabularies in the research proposals and mid-term reports of consortiums during the Strategic…

Using computational design methods, this study aims to analyze the effects of an integrated design process model on the ecological awareness of architectural students, and on their ability to incorporate ecological issues in their design work. To this end, two studies have been carried out. The first one involves a survey about how ecology-related…

The research presented is of an investigation into the critical thinking (CT) and problem solving (PS) abilities used by high school technology and engineering (T/E) students when attempting to achieve a viable solution for an authentic engineering design-no-make challenge presented outside the context of the classroom in which their STEM content…

Amidst views by teachers that they are not involved in decisions about curriculum making, Caribbean orality provides a way of knowing and transmitting knowledge reflective of the dynamics of the local context and the meanings people make of the spoken word. Caribbean orality provides the opportunity to understand how teachers make sense of…

This special issue joins the recent but growing effort to expand knowledge in the learning sciences, by examining the notion of participation in teacher-researcher collaborative design (co-design). Co-design is not just a means to an end; it is a context where professional learning happens. Each of the seven papers describes teacher-researcher…

In recent years, there have been numerous initiatives regarding the incorporation of building performance simulation tools (BPSTs) in the field of architecture, but unfortunately they have not been considered in updates of the curricula of building designers' careers at a global level. This paper presents an example of the use of BPSTs in the…