Virtual tutors are a promising technology, providing a rich interactive environment for children to learn in. However, the question of how they should behave in order to enhance pupils' motivation remains unanswered. Using an embodied conversational agent platform, we tested human-computer interactions with 22 children aged 9-11 years. Children…

In the following study we investigate how young learners engage with music and movement to illustrate their understandings and connections to nature. We discover a symbiotic relationship between the performing arts, Social Emotional Learning, and Mindful Learning over the course of six months, and examine the potentials and constraints of this…

Research has demonstrated that people generally think both their knowledge and performance levels are greater than they are. Although several studies have suggested that knowledge and progress visualization offered by open learner modeling (OLM) technology might influence students' self-awareness in a positive way, insufficient evidence exists to…

Background: This case reports on a teacher education course that aimed to support adult learners with a vocational education background to accomplish open-ended tasks. Conjecture mapping was used to identify the most salient design features, and to test if, how, and why these course features supported learners. Methods: Inspired by ethnographic…

In this personal narrative reflection, the author examines her experiences teaching everyday science during the COVID-19 pandemic. She provides examples of curiosity-driven explorations with her own twin sons related to growing plants and baking bread. Through social media she shares her home experiences with others, building a remote community of…

Structure building refers to the way in which people construct meaning from incoming information by creating a foundation of mental nodes, mapping incoming information to the foundational structure, and shifting to a new structure when necessary. Structure building ability has been shown to moderate learning both in laboratory-based and…

The present study aims at investigating the obstacles to learning maths by blind students from the perspectives of students and teachers. The sample of the study consisted of 30 students who are blind or with visually impaired. To learn about the obstacles they faced in learning maths, a questionnaire was employed, which was verified in terms of…

Many professional development programs aim to improve student outcomes by enhancing teacher competencies. Effective evaluation of these programs requires a clear delineation of the competencies to be gained. A competency model was developed to evaluate the impact of a teacher professional program that aimed to improve teachers' ability to…

The present study was an attempt to help us reveal the characteristics and complexity of today's first-time online students in a higher education setting. Data were collected from undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in fully online courses for the first time during spring semester in the 2016-2017 academic year at a Southern university in…

An understanding of acid-base reactions is necessary for success in chemistry courses and relevant to careers outside of chemistry, yet research has demonstrated that students often struggle with learning acid-base reaction mechanisms in organic chemistry. One response to this challenge is the development of educational applications to support…

This research explores the awareness and use of cognitive and metacognitive reading strategies of Omani EFL (English as a Foreign Language) students studying different disciplines. The participants were three hundred and seventy-five Omani EFL first year diploma students studying biology, business, information technology, engineering, and English…

The main objective of this study was to assess the appropriateness of literary texts in teaching reading skills at some selected high schools in Ethiopia. The study employed survey research design. Different instruments and sampling techniques were used. Document analysis was conducted to examine the appropriateness of literary texts and reading…

Field trips have long been a part of the elementary student experience, and through the years a great deal of research and work has been done around how field trips best support and facilitate learning. When new earth science unit was being rolled out across the Burlington (MA) Public Schools' second grades, the opportunity to shake up the…

The understandings prospective mathematics teachers develop by focusing on quantities and quantitative relationships within real numbers have the potential for enhancing their future students' understanding of real numbers. In this article, we propose an instructional sequence that addresses quantitative relationships for the construction of real…

Ambridge argues that the existence of exemplar models for individual phenomena (words, inflection rules, etc.) suggests the feasibility of a unified, exemplars-everywhere model that eschews abstraction. The argument would be strengthened by a description of such a model. However, none is provided. I show that any attempt to do so would immediately…