To help young students succeed in problem-based learning (PBL), researchers suggested investigating students' need for cognition (NFC), one's inclination to exert mental effort during learning. How one puts mental effort into a learning task is related to motivation. If motivated, students are more likely to engage in challenging tasks, put in…

In mathematics education, representations are used in place of mathematical structures, ideas, or relationships to concretize, transform, and represent them. When students interact with these representations, they engage in various cognitive activities such as thinking, reasoning, understanding, remembering, problem-solving, attention, and…

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…

The purpose of this study is to investigate students' thinking of direct, inverse and nonproportional problems. Thirty two seventh grade students from three different government schools participated in this study. To collect the data, the participants were asked to solve 9 open-ended problems, including 3 direct, 3 inverse and 3 non-proportional…

Both sketching and self-explanation are widely believed to be effective for problem-solving in science learning. However, it is unclear which aspects of these strategies promote learning and how they might interact. Compared to a read-only baseline, we examined the impact of instructing 11-year-old students to solve science problems to sketch,…

This systematic review examines how students manage cognitive load during STEM problem solving by using self-regulated learning (SRL) and metacognitive strategies, and how instructional designs can support these attempts. Fourteen empirical studies published since 2010 were thematically analyzed using the SALSA framework and PRISMA guidelines.…

STEM Problem solving necessitates a substantial amount of specialized domain knowledge. An important element of problem-solving within the domain includes how knowledge is structured and organized in memory to facilitate efficient retrieval of relevant information and future problem solving. In previous studies, however, problem solving and…

Prior work has established that cognitive and perceptual processes influence students' attention to notational structures in mathematical expressions, which in turn affects their problem-solving approaches and performance. Advances in educational technology provide opportunities to further investigate these processes, improve student learning, and…

Eye-tracking procedures generate copious process data that could be valuable in establishing the response processes component of modern validity theory. However, there is a lack of tools for assessing and visualizing response processes using process data such as eye-tracking fixation sequences, especially those suitable for young children. This…

Computational thinking (CT) is considered to be a critical problem-solving toolkit in the development of every student in the digital twenty-first century. Thus, it is believed that the integration of deeper learning in CT education is an approach to help students transfer their CT skills beyond the classroom. Few literature reviews have mapped…

The purpose of this study is to investigate the metacognitive strategies that middle school students used in the process of solving problems individually. The study group consisted of 37 middle school students in the eighth grade. The students were asked one non-routine word problem, and their written answers were collected. After solving the…

Collaborative problem solving (CPS) has been shown to both engage and benefit students' learning of mathematics. However, there is evidence that group work is not always easy to facilitate, in part because educators lack details about learners' engagement during group work: the processes of problem solving involved, and how these are engaged. In…

This study aims to determine the relationship between middle school students' innovative thinking tendencies and entrepreneurial skills and to identify the variables that predict entrepreneurial skill. To this end, the study used the correlational survey method. The study group consists of 274 5th-, 6th-, and 7th-graders studying in 3 middle…

This study aims to prepare statistics activity-targeting comprehension of the arithmetic mean, consisting of worked-out example explanations through ChatGPT for sixth graders; determine situations encountered during the implementation of the activity; ascertain the effect of the activity on students' mathematics problem-solving performance; and…

In the context of our rapidly digitizing society, computational thinking stands out as an essential attribute for cultivating aptitude and expertise. Through the prism of computational thinking, learners are more adeptly positioned to dissect and navigate real-world challenges, poising them effectively to meet the exigencies of future societal…