This paper explores the optimization of teacher education programs to meet the evolving demands of 21st-century classrooms. It examines key strategies to enhance teacher preparation, such as the integration of technology, fostering critical thinking, promoting inclusivity, and preparing educators to address global challenges. The paper also…

Problem-solving tasks form the backbone of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) curricula. Yet, how to improve self-monitoring and self-regulation when learning to solve problems has received relatively little attention in the self-regulated learning literature (as compared with, for instance, learning lists of items or…

The emphasis on science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) disciplines in schools has caused advocates for art education to propose the addition of the arts to the study of STEM, transforming STEM into STEAM. One method of implementing STEAM is Design Thinking (Henriksen, 2017). STEAM education and Design Thinking are both models for…

Problem solving followed by explicit instruction, as suggested by productive failure and several other instructional theories, indicates long-term learning benefits, whereas explicit instruction followed by problem solving has been consistently demonstrated as superior within the framework of cognitive load theory. However, the effectiveness of…

In contrast to the determinist and non-discrete structure of classical physical concepts, the probabilistic and discrete/quantised structure of quantum physics embeds certain difficulties in deeper understanding and teaching activities. In this study, in order to understand and to teach the concept of quantization more effectively, a clear analogy…

Integrating computational thinking (CT) and science education is complex, and assessing the resulting learning gains even more so. Arguments that assessment should match the learning (Biggs, "Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education," 21(1), 5-16. 1996; Airasian and Miranda, "Theory into Practice," 41(4), 249-254. 2002;…

A pedagogical perspective for rendering ways of knowing, being and being known, "making" and the larger maker movement are shaping contemporary educational places, practices and discourses. Despite these advances, its intersection with early literacy and childhood education are nascent. Thinking with theories of multiliteracies and…

Visual scaffolding, a type of scaffolding provided in a visual format, is considered to have potential in web-based learning environments as it naturally includes tacit information, highlights the critical features of tasks and promotes learning through the spatial organization of tasks. However, systematic approaches to visual scaffolding design…

Students often look to the standard algorithm, which requires rewriting the task, regrouping tens to create enough ones to subtract, and other opportunities to make errors. However, when the authors apply structural thinking, the resultant strategy is an efficient and elegant shortcut and even brings a positive connotation to the word…

The 'Learning Compass 2030' was released by the OECD in 2019 as their new policy framework for the compulsory schooling sector. This framework takes the bold step of asserting that access to disciplinary knowledge is central to schooling, putting it in stark contrast to previous OECD reports which have advocated instead for more generic skills and…

In this paper I analyze a problem solving event in a secondary mathematics classroom. As the event unfolds, the teachers, including me, understand the event as involving interactions that were not related to learning. By adopting an expansive view of learning, I advance a different interpretation, that the interactions tell a story of student…

My aim in this paper is to examine the epistemic habits that agents develop through frequent social media usage. I point out that extensive social media usage is conducive to the development of closed-mindedness and unreflective thinking and accordingly argue that social media act as inadvertent educators of epistemic vices. I contend that…

Research in mathematics education suggests that learning to solve a problem should involve modelling and visual representation (e.g., Lesh & Zawojewski, 2007). According to researchers, transforming a mental representation of a situation into a visual representation of mathematical relationships between quantities enhances students'…

How can school mathematics prepare citizens for a democratic society? Answers to this question are not static; they change as society and its problems change. The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic with its corresponding disease COVID-19 presents such a problem: what is needed to navigate this complex situation that involves, among other things, mathematics?…

Students in the physical sciences--physics and chemistry--often take multiple-choice exams for introductory courses. Some students will write a lot on their exams, while others write very little. Does the student doing more scratch work on their exam perform better than one who does not write as much? We analyzed multiple-choice exams in physics…