Open-ended learning environments (OELEs) support constructivist approaches to STEM learning. This promotes student engagement and facilitates a deeper understanding of STEM topics. Despite their benefits, OELEs can present significant challenges for novice learners. Recent studies have revealed the complex relationship between students' affective…

Robotics education is valuable for developing students' 21st century competencies. It is of significant importance for teachers and researchers to explore its effective pedagogies. Robotics learning is interdisciplinary, and the most effective pedagogy is problem-oriented instruction. This type of instruction requires students to independently…

Learners' choices as to whether and how to use visual representations during learning are an important yet understudied aspect of self-regulated learning. To gain insight, we developed a "choice-based" intelligent tutor in which students can choose whether and when to use diagrams to aid their problem solving in algebra. In an…

Research and development of Learning Analytics (LA) have created new ways to support students' learning. However, our understanding of teachers' roles when implementing LA in classroom practices remains nascent. This study investigates how teachers can implement LA to support students' agency in directing their own inquiry, when engaging in a…

Prior findings highlight school students' low motivation to study science, while 21st-century education aims to achieve their key competencies: scientific literacy and autonomous problem-solving to be prepared for smooth adaption to quickly changing circumstances. Real-life learning scenarios can meet these shortfalls to engage the learners by the…

The relation between academic achievement and various measurements of cognitive abilities, problem-solving skills and self-managed learning has been established in the research before the COVID-19 pandemic and distance learning. The aim of the current research was to analyze the extent to which these aspects predicted the educational achievement…

This paper explores how maker pedagogies helped middle school students develop transferable competencies, such as creativity, problem solving, self-directed learning and citizenship skills. We offer an in-depth look at how purposeful or critical making related to bullying awareness can help struggling students develop positive attitudes related to…

The purpose of this study is to develop learning materials based on realistic mathematics education approach that are valid, practical and effective to improve problem solving skills and learning independence of class VII students. This research is a development research that uses a design model for materials development according to Thiagarajan,…

Worked examples and collaborative learning have both been shown to facilitate learning. However, the testing of both strategies almost exclusively has been conducted independently of each other. The main aim of the current study was to examine interactions between these 2 strategies. Two experiments (N = 182 and N = 122) were conducted with…

Students' seatwork plays an important part in their learning in their lessons, and very often, students record their private work in the notebooks during seatwork. The students' private work in their notebooks reflects students' learning and thinking, representing explicit learning outcomes. The students' private work in their notebooks of 14…

Collaborative and individual learning are both frequently used in classrooms to support learning. However, little research has investigated the benefits of combining individual and collaborative learning, as compared to learning only individually or only collaboratively. With our study, we address this research gap. We compared a combined…

Purpose: In school improvement studies, randomized experiments are rare. A special problem is the assignment to the experimental and control groups, taking into account the different starting conditions at the schools in terms of school improvement competencies. The purpose of this paper is to take the example of an intervention study conducted in…

Researchers have long recognized the potential benefits of open-ended computer- based learning environments (OELEs) to help students develop self-regulated learning (SRL) behaviours. However, measuring self-regulation in these environments is a difficult task. In this paper, we present our work in developing and evaluating "coherence…

Providing student choice and opportunities for independent study are recognized as viable differentiation techniques. Daily homework sets that contain more demanding problems even though not required allow the teacher to provide challenge without incurring undue stress. The modest incentive of some homework bonus points is enough to whet the…

Mathematical problem solving is one of the most valuable aspects of mathematics education. It is also the most difficult for elementary-school students (Verschaffel, Greer, & De Corte, 2000). Students experience cognitive and metacognitive difficulties in this area and develop negative emotions and poor motivation, which hamper their efforts…