This study investigates how 25 junior high school students employed their bodies of knowledge and responded to problem cues while individually performing a science experiment and reasoning about a drops phenomenon. Line-by-line content analysis conducted on students' written ad hoc explanations aimed to reveal students' concepts and their…

The current historical moment is marked by the gradual transition from a print culture to a digital new media culture, and this shift carries material effects for how education research contexts are perceived and represented. This discussion uses the concept of materiality to demonstrate how the conceptualization of inquiry through digital…

In many literacy classrooms, students engage in public performances in which they use various texts, movements of their bodies, and verbal interactions. How do we interpret such events? In this article, we critique a representational mode of interpretation and describe an alternate mode. We argue that literacy performances are often about creating…

Coded experience and effective semiotic systems, organizations of patterns of signs that comprise a system of meaning, have proved essential for the propagation of knowledge. In education, communication via semiotic systems forms an important role in guiding children toward the effective use of information and techniques, and it is important that…

In our investigation of preservice secondary teachers' understanding of irrational numbers we focus on how different representations influence participants' responses with respect to irrationality. As a theoretical perspective we use the distinction between transparent and opaque representations, that is, representations that "show"…

This book focuses on understanding knowledge and learning in the contexts of economic development and social cohesion. A preliminary overview is presented of the knowledge processes at work in different sectors, and the book identifies a number of ways in which microlevel or sectoral understanding of the knowledge-based economy is important in…

It is assumed that cooperative learning continuously constructs and extends the shared knowledge of a group of learners with respect to a specific learning domain. Experiences with Computer-Supported Collaborative/Cooperative Learning (CSCL) environments indicate that an explicit representation of the shared knowledge is helpful with regard to two…

As biological and socio-cultural beings, humans are encouraged and aspire to "see" not only what comes "within sight," but also what is not possible to see. Visualization is described as offering a method of seeing the unseen. These ideas are organized into sections that focus on seeing the unseen in data, seeing the unseen in…

A brief and selective overview of historical evidence of females' involvement in mathematics precedes a review of developments in research on gender and mathematics learning. Gender equity concerns have attracted considerable research attention by mathematics educators in many countries, and over time the body of work on gender and mathematics…

This paper gives a brief introduction to a discipline called the cognitive science of mathematics. The theoretical background of the arguments is based on embodied cognition and findings in cognitive linguistics. It discusses Mathematical Idea Analysis, a set of techniques for studying implicit structures in mathematics. Particular attention is…

This paper focuses on some cognitive and didactical phenomena that feature processes and products of pupils in grades 7-12 who learned mathematical proof within technological environments. The main issues in the analysis of students' performances consist of metaphors, deictics, mental times, narratives, functions of dragging, abductions, and…

The Partnership for Research in Spatial Modeling (PRISM) project at Arizona State University (ASU) developed modeling and analytic tools to respond to the limitations of two-dimensional (2D) data representations perceived by affiliated discipline scientists, and to take advantage of the enhanced capabilities of three-dimensional (3D) data that…

The research described in this paper is concentrated on the demand for high quality interchangeable knowledge objects capable of supporting dynamic learning initiatives. The general metadata models (Dublin Core, IMS, LOM, SCORM) for knowledge objects enrichment are reviewed and a critique is provided in order to claim the importance of the…

Five books, representing a small selection of possible readings on necessary changes of the human mind, point to a convergence of interest from different fields of study toward the need for modern society to develop the capacity to respond to the complexity of modern life and the newly acquired ability to destroy life on an unprecedented scale.…

Transfer of training in the construction and use of knowledge maps to text comprehension was investigated. Knowledge maps (k-maps) are spatial/verbal arrays that represent information in the form of node-link diagrams. K-maps make the macrostructure of a body of information more easily available to the learner. Because k-maps emphasize…