Explores high school students' collaborative efforts in solving qualitative physics problems and investigates how and whether confronting students with varying views improves problem solving skills. (Contains 22 references.) (DDR)

Investigates teacher education methods for teacher development as constructivist science instructors. Explains a typical day in a classroom using the traditional teaching approach and makes recommendations for promoting scientific thinking and problem solving. (YDS)

This paper describes the global feedback in ActiveMath, a Web-based adaptive learning environment for mathematics and beyond. It addresses some of the cognitive foundations and the architecture of the suggestion mechanism with its components. This architecture separates components for diagnosis from components for suggestions and different types…

This article describes the nutrition component of a Home and Career Skills curriculum at Hommocks Middle School (Larchmont, NY) that includes the Breakfast Cafe Webquest, which encourages 7th graders to increase the amounts of fruits and vegetables in their diets as well as reduce serving sizes. Using this Webquest, students "help the Breakfast…

Social studies educators advocate discussion as an influential instructional method to encourage students to apply knowledge and develop higher-order thinking and understanding. The classroom reality, however, is that teachers only use the discussion method sparingly. Instead, teachers predominantly use a quasi-discussion form called recitation to…

This paper briefly outlines the evolution of ICT-based learning environments discussing some of the main aspects that have characterised such evolution (eg, technological evolution, changed cognitive and pedagogical frameworks, changed role assigned to ICT-based systems in education). The objective is to point out how the implementation of…

This article illustrates students' efforts to resolve an apparent discrepancy between their self-generated solutions and the answer obtained using the division algorithm for fractions. (Contains 5 figures.)

This article describes the pitfalls of using key words to support students when problem solving, and provides an alternative way (quantitative analysis) to support students' sense-making. (Contains 1 table and 2 figures.)

This article details a variety of activities that can be used with middle school students to investigate the size of the number 1,000,000. The activities focus on real-life applications of mathematical proportions and helps students to understand the magnitude of large numbers. (Contains 8 figures.)

This article describes ways in which students develop schemas as they generalize and formalize patterns when solving related algebraic problems that involve size, shape, growth, and change. (Contains 7 figures and 3 tables.)

Working from Carolyn Kieran's categorization of "arithmetic" and "algebraic" thinkers, the article describes one eighth-grade "arithmetic" thinker's progress as she attempts to solve one- and two-step equations.

Worthwhile mathematical tasks not only prompt students to learn mathematics, they also prompt teachers to learn and improve their teaching in their own mathematics classrooms. When teachers use worthwhile tasks, they have to learn "what aspects of a task to highlight, how to organize and orchestrate the work of the students, what questions to ask…

This article describes the experience of teaching structural bioinformatics to third year undergraduate students in a subject titled "Biomolecular Structure and Bioinformatics." Students were introduced to computer programming and used this knowledge in a practical application as an alternative to the well established Internet bioinformatics…

The extensive use of commercial kits in molecular biology and biochemistry has prompted us to design a series of practical sessions to help students become familiar with the uses and limitations of pre-packaged assay systems. To facilitate an understanding of these assay systems and to promote reflection on their appropriate use, students…

Students need much assistance if they are to successfully use the Location and Access procedure of problem-solving. Guidelines are presented on how classroom teachers and library media specialists can help elementary students manage this Big6 stage.