The capacity to plan ahead and provide the means for future ends is an important part of human practical reasoning. When this capacity develops in ontogeny is the matter of an ongoing debate. In this study, 4- and 5-year-olds performed a future planning task in which they had to create the means (a picture of a particular object, e.g., a banana)…

One crucial characteristic of scientifically literate individuals is making informed decisions in socioscientific issues (SSI). Participants' reasoning patterns and their risk perceptions shape their decisions. Thus, determining participants' informal reasoning patterns along with their risk perceptions while making decisions in SSI becomes…

This study was carried out to determine relationship between prospective teachers (studying at department of social studies teaching)' attitudes towards learning and their scientific epistemological beliefs. The study was conducted with 213 prospective (preservice) social studies teachers who were studying at Faculty of Education of a public…

Evolutionary anthropologists commonly describe humans as a highly cooperative species, based on our evolved socio-cognitive capacities. However, students and the general public may not necessarily share this view about our species. At the same time, fostering our ability to cooperate is considered a key foundation for achieving sustainable…

Aim/Purpose: This study seeks to understand the various ways information systems (IS) students experience introductory programming to inform IS educators on effective pedagogical approaches to teaching programming. Background: Many students who choose to major in information systems (IS), enter university with little or no experience of learning…

Mathematical literacy (ML) is considered central to the application of mathematical knowledge in everyday life and thus is found in many comparative international educational standards. However, there exists barely any evidence about predictors and outcomes of ML having a lasting effect on achievement in nonmathematical domains. We drew on a large…

One of the important goals of problem-based learning (PBL) in medical education is to enhance medical students' clinical reasoning--hypothetico-deductive reasoning (HDR) in particular--through small group discussions. However, few studies have focused on explicit strategies for promoting students' HDR during group discussions in PBL. This paper…

Purpose: Learning mathematics is a complex process, requiring many conceptual lenses and rich data sources to document and understand students' construction of knowledge. The purpose of this article is both to introduce a unique database on students' mathematical learning and to describe analytical techniques used to study students' growth of the…

This study identifies a population of students who have an intermediate amount of relevant content knowledge and skill for working with data, and characterizes their approach to interpreting a challenging data-based visualization. Thirty-three undergraduate students enrolled in an introductory environmental science course reasoned about salinity…

This paper synthesizes research from three separate studies, analysing how different representations of a mathematical concept may affect young children's engagement with mathematical activities. Children between five and seven years old engaged in counting objects, identifying triangles and completing repeating patterns. The implementation of…

Instructors communicate what they value about students' written work through their comments and feedback, and this feedback has the potential to direct how students approach writing assignments. In this study, we examined how graduate student teaching assistants (TAs) attended and responded to students' written lab reports in an introductory…

This project provides a framework for interrogating the language often used in media reporting on education, and making those often hidden ideological underpinnings more visible. Explored through this analysis are the language, metaphors, logic, and rhetorical devices used by various news media reporting on educational concerns, and in particular…

An assessment was developed using entries from the macromolecular Crystallographic Information File that was given to students in an upper level bioinformatics class at the end of the semester during a 2½ hour time period. Although all students completed the same questions, they were assessed on an individual protein they had worked on during the…

We report a case study of model-based reasoning in which a small group of fourth-grade students analyzes the energy flow when a solar panel is used to power an electric motor that spins a propeller. In developing their explanation of energy flow, the students draw on a general model of energy developed collectively by their class in the course of…

The study endeavored to determine if teaching test-taking strategies had an impact on the students' performance on the ACT science subsection exam. Students received test-taking strategies instruction for the ACT science subsection exam. Students were administered a pre-and post-test, confidence survey, and strategies ranking list. The study also…