This qualitative study investigated non-guided applications of school science by high school youth in Ontario in non-school contexts. Although science education (in Ontario and elsewhere) mostly focuses on the meaningful learning of science, learning that can lead to knowledge application, non-guided application of acquired knowledge is rarely…

Organic synthesis problems require the solver to integrate knowledge and skills from many parts of their courses. Without a well-defined, systematic method for approaching them, even the strongest students can experience difficulties. Our research goal was to identify the most successful problem-solving strategies and develop associated teaching…

This report follows up on the book "Leapfrogging Inequality: Remaking Education to Help Young People Thrive," published in 2018 by the Center for Universal Education (CUE) at the Brookings Institution. The book argued the importance of education leapfrogging--creating transformative shifts rather than incremental evolution by harnessing…

Recent years have seen the emergence of design-thinking and maker learning initiatives across formal and informal learning environments. A variety of offerings, from museum and afterschool programs, to STEM challenges and entrepreneurship courses, create opportunities for young people to develop skills relevant to today's workplace. Design-based…

Using the 2012 PIAAC data, our analysis confirms that there are significantly higher earnings and employment returns to "both" increasing levels of formally recognised education, and to increasing levels of numeracy, literacy and information and communication technologies (ICT) skills proficiencies controlling for the level of education.…

This study aims to understand the predictive role of attitudes towards problem solving, such as perseverance and openness for problem solving, as well as of gender and country for Canadian and Finnish students' academic achievement in mathematics and science. We examined the data of students from Canada (n = 21,544) and Finland (n = 8,829) who…

Several types of converging evidence have suggested recently that skilled adults solve very simple addition problems (e.g., 2 + 1, 4 + 2) using a fast, unconscious counting algorithm. These results stand in opposition to the long-held assumption in the cognitive arithmetic literature that such simple addition problems normally are solved by fact…

This study aimed to investigate the challenges international students face during their studies at Kwantlen polytechnic university. The research focused on the English language, study-related and financial issues, and adjustment to life in Canada. The participants were 25 females and 38 male students of 18-35 years old from China, India and the…

An Activity Theory framework has been increasingly applied for understanding the tension or contradictions in telecollaboration. However, to date, few researchers have applied it to the analysis of digital stories, and none of them, to our knowledge, have used it to analyze the co-creation of multilingual digital stories. In this study, we explore…

Pupils' difficulties in solving word problems continue to attract attention: while researchers highlight the importance of relational reasoning and modelling, school curricula typically use short word problems to develop pupils' knowledge of arithmetic operations and calculation strategies. The Relational Paradigm attributes the leading role in…

Mixed findings characterize the literature on skills and economic distributions within and across countries. The Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) offers new, internationally comparable data on literacy, numeracy, and digital problem-solving skills that can be combined with wage information. This paper…

In this study, we investigated how empirical indicators of test-taking engagement can be defined, empirically validated, and used to describe group differences in the context of the Programme of International Assessment of Adult Competences (PIAAC). The approach was to distinguish between disengaged and engaged response behavior by means of…

"New Directions of STEM Research and Learning in the World Ranking Movement: A Comparative Perspective" illustrates new directions of STEM higher education from the perspective of twenty-first century types of learning outcomes and focuses on need for developing an interdisciplinary approach to STEM higher education reform. It provides…

Previous studies have shown that people start traveling sales problem tours significantly more often from boundary than from interior nodes. There are a number of possible reasons for such a tendency: first, it may arise as a direct result of the processes involved in tour construction; second, boundary points may be perceptually more salient than…

Recent research reveals an apparent paradox for U.S. millennials (born after 1980, ages 16-34): while they may be on track to be our most educated generation ever, they consistently score below many of their international peers in literacy, numeracy and problem solving in technology-rich environments. Equally troubling is that these findings…