Educators often use stories, humor, surprise, images, or other ploys to catch students' interest. This form of interest, often called "situational interest" because of how it is triggered by contextual cues, can facilitate learning to some degree. Yet it also may carry risks. This article proposes one such potential risk: flawed…

Many scholars have repeatedly argued that the goals of achieving advanced language skills and understanding literary texts are not to be seen as mutually exclusive and cannot be considered separately. Nevertheless, no general consensus on the approach or how to go about it exists. What is still missing are principled and comprehensive ways of…

This commentary focuses on one of the positive impacts of COVID-19, which was to tie societal inequity to testing in a manner that could motivate the reimagining of our field. That reimagining needs to account for our nation's dramatically changing demographics so that assessment generally, and standardized testing specifically, better fit the…

The purpose of this publication is to present a novel approach to the demonstration of the Dzhanibekov effect. The main idea of our version is to use a lightweight spinning top of a spherical external form but distinct principal moments of inertia floating in the upward flow of air. As a result, the Dzhanibekov effect can be easily demonstrated…

This study describes a theory-informed application of data science methods to analyze the quality of reflections made in a health professions education program over time. One thousand five hundred reflections written by a cohort of 369 dental students over 4 years of academic study were evaluated for an overall measure of reflection depth (No,…

Traditional efforts around improving assessment often center on the teacher as the evaluator of work rather than the students. These assessment efforts typically focus on measuring learning rather than stimulating, promoting, or producing learning in students. This paper summarizes a study of a large sample of undergraduate students (n = 550) in…

Educational settings are emotional places where students experience diverse emotions in relation to academic activities and their outcomes. Emotions, in turn, greatly influence students' learning process and engagement. Research on emotions in Design-Based Learning (DBL) has so far been coarse-grained examining how students evaluate their overall…

Physics teachers are sometimes asked to teach an astronomy course for non-majors. One can't make that class dance and sing without the starry night, but on a brightly lit campus viewing deep sky objects may seem impossible. Hence instructors often opt for planetarium shows. However: 1) Planetariums aren't the real thing. 2) People living in large…

Developing self-regulated learning (SRL) processes (i.e., goal-setting, strategy use, self-monitoring, and attributions) can enhance motivational beliefs including self-efficacy, interest, and task value. In this article, SRL processes and motivation are conceptualized within a cyclical feedback loop, which demonstrates how SRL processes affect…

The subject of mathematics is important for many other subjects, including physics. The questions we ask in physics often need a mathematical translation to be graphically interpreted and transformed. Students learn physics when interacting with physical questions; questions from physics also give insights and discoveries in mathematical problems.…

This article revisits a recently published, critical qualitative review of research on culturally informed literacy instruction in preschool and elementary school contexts. The original published review analyzed literacy instruction described as culturally relevant, culturally responsive, or culturally sustaining across 56 peer-reviewed studies.…

Educational processes are supervised by administrative chiefs or inspectors for teachers and school administrators. Supervision may be stressful for those inspected although some time is given for preparation through prior notice. However, supervision, a way to improve the training and management processes as intended, should not be a phenomenon…

Purpose: The Optimizing Performance Through Motivation and Attention for Learning (OPTIMAL) theory predicts that providing learners with choices during skill acquisition will enhance their acquisition performance, motor learning, and expectancies. Based on this theory, it is recommended that instructors ask learners to choose which tasks to…

The purpose of this study is to discern and discuss issues with relevance to the tension between contextuality and generalisation, which recurrently are identified over time in research reviews of teaching methods. The 75 most cited reviews on teaching methods listed in the Web of Science from 1980 to 2017 were analysed. Since our interest is the…

Objective: The aim of this current paper is to investigate the salient embodiment features in the empirical studies on technology-enabled embodied learning environments (TEELEs), and to contribute a comprehensive conceptual framework to direct the understanding and the designing of TEELEs -- to embody and how to embody. Method: In this thematic…