American higher education scholars found that college students' spirituality and religiosity significantly impact their college experiences and outcomes (Astin et al., 2011a, 2011b; Astin & Lindholm, 2011; Kuh & Gonyea, 2006). While attention on the importance of spirituality and religiosity has increased, international students'…

This research consisted of two studies to investigate how the Chinese rural educational system supported students' online learning and to determine the factors that influenced students' online learning quality (satisfaction and cognitive and social presence) during the COVID-19 pandemic. Study 1, based on interviews with three curriculum officers,…

This dissertation is guided by my driving research question: what works for whom in education and why? I examine issues of instruction, assessment, and research approaches that begin to answer this question. Study 1 examines a classroom intervention's child x instruction interactions. Study 2 examines underlying cognitive factors, including…

Writing places heavy demands on students' cognitive capacity. Existing research suggests that planning before writing can help to alleviate this cognitive burden; thus improving the quality of student writing. In this explanatory sequential mixed-methods study, the researcher examined the efficacy of specific pre-planning tools on students'…

Recent genetic discoveries offer a new lens through which to study cognitive, emotional, behavioral, and social processes that are foundational to children's development. In this article, we review the latest advances in genomics--genome-wide association studies and the polygenic scores that have come out of them--and discuss how these techniques…

Augmented reality (AR) has the potential to enhance visual cognition through virtual object experimentation and practice, while also fostering spatial skills relevant to mathematics. This experimental study was conducted with 86 sixth graders in Eastern China, involving a 3-month AR integrated Mathematics Curriculum (ARiMC), with pre- and…

Background: To become qualified engineers, undergraduates must develop a contextualized epistemic cognition (EC) during the engineering design process (EDP), but little is known about their EC in the authentic EDP. This study aimed to gain an in-depth understanding of the EC and reported epistemic changes of undergraduate engineering students who…

Theoretical considerations and results from individual differences studies suggest that working memory and conflict resolution are interrelated functions. Yet, there is little direct evidence suggesting that they actually share common cognitive resources. To study how overcoming conflict influences the maintenance of working memory representations…

Purpose: Children with developmental language disorder (DLD) often have difficulty with word learning. Recent studies have shown that incorporating retrieval practice provides a significant benefit to this learning. However, we have not yet discovered the best balance between the amount of retrieval and the amount of study (hearing the word in the…

The main goals of this paper are to exemplify and further elaborate on the theoretical connections between cognitive load and self-regulated learning. In an effort to achieve this, we integrate the concepts of self-control and self-management within the effort monitoring and regulation (EMR) framework laid out by de Bruin et al. (Educational…

This article presents preliminary analysis of a test item in a large-scale study design to promote the development of geometric reasoning progression. Two sets of data were analysed to validate the item designed to assess secondary school students' knowledge of a rectangle. The first data set involved 155 Year 4-10 students from seven trial…

The aim of this study is to develop a Disciplined Mind Scale (DMS) in order to determine the disciplined mind features of 4th grade students. Considering that students around the age of 11 can have some scientific thinking skills, it is thought that the disciplined mind features of 4th grade students should be determined. The sample of this…

Two experiments are presented that use tasks common in research in numerical cognition with young adults and older adults as subjects. In these tasks, one or two arrays of dots are displayed, and subjects decide whether there are more or fewer dots of one kind than another. Results show that older adults, relative to young adults, tend to rely…

Transdisciplinary learning environments have potential to bring together the arts, sciences, and computing within schools. We investigate the student and teacher enactment of sensemaking practices that break down disciplinary silos. We describe a pedagogical approach, Luminous Science, where students make dynamic, computationally-rich artistic…

Informed by decades of research and standards-based policies, there has been a growing demand for high-quality teaching and learning in mathematics and science classrooms. Achieving these ambitious goals will not be easy; students' opportunities for learning as shaped by the tasks they are assigned will matter the most. The purpose of this article…