This paper will present a review of design-based research conducted over the past 10 years that has modeled and promoted students' reasoning, conceptual change and argumentative dialogue processes and practices through designing a number of digital dialogue games. This line of work was inspired by some challenges and insights that emerged during…

Genetic algorithms (GAs) are a problem solving strategy that uses stochastic search. Since their introduction (Holland, 1975), GAs have proven to be particularly useful for solving problems that are "intractable" using classical methods. The language of genetic algorithms (GAs) is heavily laced with biological metaphors from evolutionary…

In recent years several mathematics education researchers have attempted to analyse students' arguments using a restricted form of Toulmina's ["The Uses of Argument," Cambridge University Press, UK, 1958] argumentation scheme. In this paper we report data from task-based interviews conducted with highly talented postgraduate mathematics students,…

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of a one-year regular robotic toys (lego) training on school pupils' performance. The underlying pedagogical perspective is the "constructionist theory," where the main idea is that knowledge is constructed in the mind of the pupil by active learning. The investigation has been made…

Teachers of physiology at all postsecondary levels were asked to participate in a survey about the possible sources of students' difficulty in learning physiology. Sixty-three physiology teachers responded to the 18-question survey; 35 of the respondents also responded to a request for written comments about this issue prior to taking the survey.…

Elementary school children in the United States are not developing acceptable levels of mathematical proficiency (National Center for Education Statistics, 1999), and a major concern of teacher educators is that teachers lack the depth and flexibility of mathematical understanding and the corresponding beliefs they need to teach for proficiency…

The purpose of this research was to examine the effects of implementation of argumentation in a physics classroom on students' reasoning. This research is both quantitative and qualitative in nature. Experimental design was used for the study. For the quantitative aspect of the research, students' prior knowledge in the beginning of the…

Despite the increasing use of the microgenetic methodology to examine change, the techniques employed to analyse microgenetic data remain fairly unsophisticated. This paper reviews the existing ways of analysing such data and describes their limitations. We use two recent studies to illustrate how modelling can avoid these problems and reveal…

For seven years, the author has been the parent of a wonderfully uniquely gifted little boy, who has taught her all about "exceptional" parenting. Her child, Adrian, is a "twice-exceptional" child who is both intellectually gifted and has special needs that negatively impact his development and learning. Initially, the contradictions of parenting…

This study assessed overall critical thinking ability in graduate and undergraduate students in special education at a southwestern university. A comparison of the two groups resulted in significant differences on the Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal Form Short (WGCTA-FS) subscales for Inference, Recognition of Assumption, Deduction, and…

This paper describes a freshman composition course which looks at racism and sexism in science, and within which the instructor uses a 1989 "Atlantic Monthly" piece by R.J. Herrnstein, co-author with Charles Murray of "The Bell Curve." In his article, Herrnstein argues that the intelligence of the nation is declining because…

This guide offers more than 100 games from around the world designed to help students explore the fun of learning while developing their higher-order thinking skills. The guide is a compilation of new and traditional games, most of which can be completed with paper and pencil. Each game is classroom tested and tailored to enhance the intelligences…

In this paper it is argued that the characterization of mathematical justifications as inductive or deductive is incomplete. Promoting in classrooms the development of and discourse about a third type of reasoning, transformational reasoning, which considers the results of operations on a set of objects, may contribute to mathematics learning in…

The author states two "Birdcage Axioms" (often called the Pigeonhole principles) and shows how students can prove a variety of theorems from them. (SD)

Investigated the intercorrelations among tasks that appear to require Piagetian formal reasoning to determine whether formal reasoning is used selectively or all-pervasively. Subjects were 60 undergraduate females. (SDH)