Massive open online courses (MOOCs) offer opportunities for professional development of environmental educators globally, yet we lack understanding of participants™ cognitive and social learning processes and of how instructors can enhance these processes. Based on the Community of Inquiry framework, we used a survey and coded participant…

Children's solutions to simple word problems requiring addition or subtraction skills develop through four stages: (1) modeling with objects; (2) utilization of both modeling and counting strategies; (3) reliance on counting strategies; and (4) reliance on number facts. The current primary mathematics curriculum fails to capitilize on rich…

The emphasis on promoting thinking skills in the classroom has fostered several trends, tendencies, and tensions. This movement has taken three directions: the teaching of thinking, teaching for thinking, and teaching about thinking. In the first, thinking is regarded as a process of developing a set amount of skills. The proponents of this…

Since the mid-1960s a new approach has dominated American research in the area of mathematics education -- information-processing theory. The author examines several examples of research in this new tradition and sketches the general features of an emerging information-processing psychology of teaching. Information-processing studies that employ…

Considers the role of evolution and natural selection in the functioning of the modern human brain. Natural selection equipped humans with a mental toolbox of intuitive theories about the world which were used to master rocks, tools, plants, animals, and one another. The same toolbox is used today to master the intellectual challenges of modern…

Even when the socioeconomic background is controlled, there is still a difference between blacks and whites in academic achievement. Studies have shown that, though social class is a factor in that difference, ethnicity is the primary factor. This report discusses ideologies that have tried to explain that ethnic difference. It discusses the…

This document was prepared to help parents, educators, and concerned citizens better understand how children and adolescents actually learn. True learning involves: (1) developing a passion for learning; (2) acquiring communication skills; (3) constructing new knowledge; (4) taking part in concrete activities; and (5) developing problem solving…

Although teachers may sequence instructions carefully, they are unable to respond to the complex unique experience of each individual learner. Divergent production should be an instructional choice that enables individuals to learn through their own recall and idea construction. Learning is problem solving; when individuals do not know how to deal…