In this article Campbell and Neilson discuss several design strategies developed or adopted that were found particularly helpful when sequencing a unit that focused on learning about motion and acceleration. Students were expected to predict, observe, and explain why a ball traveled down one ramp faster than the other. Before engaging students,…

Examples of equilibrium are evident everywhere and the equilibrium rule provides a reasoned way to view all things, whether in static (balancing rocks, steel beams in building construction) or dynamic (airplanes, bowling balls) equilibrium. Interestingly, the equilibrium rule applies not just to objects at rest but whenever any object or system of…

Different kinds of arguments typically include claims, warrants, and evidence. However, the very nature of claims, warrants, and evidence are discipline specific. A student's essay, for example, may exhibit features of argumentation while revealing fundamental flaws in historical thinking. Stronger historical arguments exhibit historical thinking…

While entropy is often described as "disorder," it is better thought of as a measure of how spread out energy is within a system. To illustrate this interpretation of entropy to introductory college or high school students, several activities have been created. Students first study the relationship between microstates and macrostates to…

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and traumatic brain injury (TBI) remain central topics in institutions' efforts to address student veteran needs. From the authors' experiences with student veterans, they present the five principles of effective instructional practice identified by the National Research Council (NRC) within the context of…

This paper addresses a perennial question of the religious studies and, indeed, of most liberal arts classrooms: How do I get my students to read texts thoroughly and with understanding? After briefly reviewing the National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL) data, I argue that what teachers desire is not just basic literacy, but fluency, which is…

Today's state literacy standards and assessments demand deeper levels of knowledge from students. But many teachers ask, "What does depth of knowledge look like on these new, more rigorous assessments? How do we prepare students for this kind of thinking?" In this article, Nancy Boyles uses a sampling of questions from the PARCC and SBAC…

For decades, students have been encouraged to use "Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally" as a means of learning the order of operations. Teachers unfamiliar with the Aunt Sally mnemonic are perhaps more familiar with a mnemonic such as PEMDAS. Each mnemonic is intended to convey "parentheses, exponents, multiplication, division,…

This paper presents a rationale for and description of the professional development system designed to help teachers understand and use the Birthday Party (BP) Mathematics Assessment, a standardized assessment with child-friendly birthday party themed tasks, and ultimately to leverage their learning from the BP to conduct their own meaningful…

Creative activity of a pedagogic process subject depends on the pedagogue's position, on his faith in the abilities to learn successfully, on encouragement of achievements, stimulating the initiative and activity. Successful learning by activating creative activity is possible with the presence of respectful attitude towards the pedagogic process…

In a recent paper, Pierre Tchounikine has suggested to advance the Script Theory of Guidance (SToG) by addressing the question how learners appropriate collaboration scripts presented to them in learning environments. Tchounikine's main criticism addresses SToG's "internal script configuration principle." This principle states that in…

Introducing challenging tasks in such a way that makes them accessible, rather than daunting, to students is a challenge for teachers. Solving challenging tasks involves students having to grapple with the problem. The role of the teacher is to motivate and clarify the problem rather than showing students how to solve the problem.

Figure analysis is a novel active learning teaching technique that reinforces visual literacy. Small groups of students discuss diagrams in class in order to learn content. The instructor then gives a brief introduction and later summarizes the content of the figure. This teaching technique can be used in place of lecture as a mechanism to deliver…

The "interpretive turn" has gained traction as a research approach in recent decades in the empirical social sciences. While the contributions of interpretive research and interpretive research methods are clear, we wonder: Does an interpretive perspective lend itself to--or even demand--a particular style of teaching? This question was…

In this study, the systematic use of variation and invariance in the teaching of mathematics is examined in accordance with two different but compatible explicit frameworks. We consider the following: (1) differences in tasks that follow on from each other can significantly change what can be learned; (2) Chinese teachers (and probably those in…