The "gender gap" on various physics conceptual evaluations has been extensively studied. Men's average pretest scores on the Force Concept Inventory and Force and Motion Conceptual Evaluation are 13% higher than women's, and post-test scores are on average 12% higher than women's. This study analyzed the gender differences within the…

Three experiments examined children's and adults' abilities to use statistical and temporal information to distinguish between common cause and causal chain structures. In Experiment 1, participants were provided with conditional probability information and/or temporal information and asked to infer the causal structure of a 3-variable mechanical…

In this paper, there will be a particular focus on mental models and their application to inductive reasoning within the realm of instruction. A basic assumption of this study is the observation that the construction of mental models and related reasoning is a slowly developing capability of cognitive systems that emerges effectively with proper…

Atkinson and Shiffrin's (1968) dual-store model of memory includes structural aspects of memory along with control processes. The rehearsal buffer is a process by which items are kept in mind and long-term episodic traces are formed. The model has been both influential and controversial. Here, we describe a novel variant of Atkinson and Shiffrin's…

Combinatorial topics have become increasingly prevalent in K-12 and undergraduate curricula, yet research on combinatorics education indicates that students face difficulties when solving counting problems. The research community has not yet addressed students' ways of thinking at a level that facilitates deeper understanding of how students…

The problem of how people process novel and unexpected information--"deep learning" (Ohlsson in "Deep learning: how the mind overrides experience." Cambridge University Press, New York, 2011)--is central to several fields of research, including creativity, belief revision, and conceptual change. Researchers have not converged…

This study utilized an innovative data analysis approach to examine how engineering undergraduates engaged in mathematical modelling. Individual modelling routes were constructed via modelling activity diagrams and were used to critically examine the theoretical framework. Implications for the theoretical model are offered along with implications…

This study measured the emotional responses of students to common service learning activities. Two hypotheses focused on (1) expected changes in the mean emotion scores and (2) expected differences in individual responses. Results showed significant increases in Surprise, Anxiety and Distress and individual differences in Contempt, Disgust and…

Learning to solve a class of problems can be characterized as a search through a space of hypotheses about the rules for solving these problems. A series of four experiments studied how different learning conditions affected the search among hypotheses about the solution rule for a simple computational problem. Experiment 1 showed that a problem…

The goal of this thesis was to investigate and enhance our understanding of what occurs while pre-service mathematics teachers engage in a mathematical modeling unit that is broadly based upon mathematical modeling as defined by the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (National Governors Association Center for Best Practices & Council…

Guided by the control-value theory of achievement emotions, we examined the relationship between cognitive appraisals (i.e. self-efficacy and task value), learning anxiety, test anxiety, enjoyment and motivation towards learning mathematics among 302 students in their first year of lower secondary school in Uganda. Students were randomly selected…

The present study explores secondary school history teachers' knowledge of inquiry methods. To do so, a process model, outlining five core cognitive processes of inquiry in the history classroom, was developed based on a review of the literature. This process model was then used to analyze think-aloud protocols of 20 teachers' reasoning during an…

The purpose of this study was to explore whether conceptual change predicted emotional and attitudinal change while learning about genetically modified foods (GMFs). Participants were 322 college students; half read a refutation text designed to shift conceptual knowledge, emotions, and attitudes, while the other half served as a control group.…

We propose two contrasting types of student decision-making based on social and cognitive psychology models of separate mental processes for problem solving. Informal decision-making uses intuitive reasoning and is subject to cognitive biases, whereas formal decision-making uses effortful, logical reasoning. We explored indicators of students'…

In the past decades, various systems have been proposed to provide students with a better learning environment by taking personal factors into account. Learning styles have been one of the widely adopted factors in the previous studies as a reference for adapting learning content or organizing the content. However, very few researchers give an…