This paper outlines a proposal to use smartphones and counterfactual reasoning to overcome rote and passive learning. Some historians and history teachers have highlighted the usefulness of counterfactual reasoning for a deeper understanding of the past. In a classroom history simulation, it is proposed here that counterfactuals can be developed…

We investigated children's (n = 120; 3- to 11-year-olds) and adults' (n = 18) reasoning about life-cycle changes in biological organisms by examining their endorsements of four different patterns of life- span changes. Participants were presented with two separate tasks: (a) judging possible adult versions of a juvenile animal and (b) judging…

Recent theories of autism have emphasised the cognitive strengths and weaknesses in those with autism, which are also seen to some degree in non-clinical samples with higher autistic-like traits. The dual process theory of autism proposes that people with autism and non-clinical people with a higher degree of autistic-like traits have a propensity…

Life's paradoxes present across the varied landscapes we traverse in education and serve as formidable barriers in attempts to secure ethical consistency in practice. The presence of paradox invites educational researchers and practitioners to diligently examine our available choices, particularly when fixed by dominant ways of knowing/being. This…

The study presented here is a follow-up to a previous report in which we investigated how general-chemistry students in a transformed curriculum reason about simple acid-base reactions. In the present study, we use and adapt the previously developed coding scheme for a longitudinal study in which we follow students from general chemistry through…

Purpose: This article examines whether syntactic and vocabulary abilities in American Sign Language (ASL) facilitate 6 categories of language-based analogical reasoning. Method: Data for this study were collected from 267 deaf participants, aged 7;6 (years;months) to 18;5. The data were collected from an ongoing study initially funded by the U.S.…

Technology is a compulsory subject at Swedish elementary schools and, according to the syllabus, helps students develop their ability to examine different technological solutions and reason how these solutions affect society, environment, and humans. An important challenge for educational research is to analyse and understand the consequences and…

Teachers of literature often have students read works of fiction to learn important truths about the world. But, it is not clear how looking at a work of fiction can tell us about the actual world. This article examines whether and how this can be done.

Difficulties in the learning of computer programming have been a universal problem. One of the main contributors of this problem is due to the teaching material used in guiding the students. Traditional teaching method using books and PowerPoint slides are not effective enough to support the dynamic nature of computer programming. Hence, a more…

Critical thinking is of very high importance in our information age. Knowledge of logical fallacies and their detection in discourses is one of the significant end results of it. Islamic and Western critical thinking have many common shared characteristics, yet there are some essential differences between them. These differences are because of the…

The concept of symmetry is vital for the study of science and developing spatial and geometric relationships. Yet few studies have been conducted to examine how students learn this concept. This study investigates 757 Year 4 to 10 students' ability to reason about symmetrical relationships. By analysing the semiotic processes through the lens of…

I discuss how three preservice mathematics teachers' (PSTs') covariational reasoning supported the mathematization of a simple energy balance model (EBM) for global warming, and how such mathematization shaped PSTs' understanding of the link CO2 pollution and global warming. I use Thompson & Carlson's (2017) levels of covariational reasoning…

Fractions are one of the most difficult areas of mathematics for all students and especially for students with learning disabilities (LD). An incomplete understanding of fractions during the elementary and middle school may be why some students view fractions as "really small" or "less than 1" compared to others who view them…

Abstract concepts dominate university science teaching, and much of this content is taught without sufficient connection to students' prior knowledge or everyday experiences. As this can be problematic for students, the aim of this research was to determine the utility and effectiveness of a professional development module on using analogies to…

Building on rich training literature, we examined which skills constituting the control-of-variables strategy (CVS) benefit from a comprehensive training, and which develop similarly during content-focused inquiry at ages 10-12. In addition, we examined whether prior knowledge, reasoning abilities, and reading comprehension explain variation in…