How does conceptual structure of external representations contribute to learning? This investigation considered the influence of generative concept sorting and of external structure information moderated by perceived difficulty. In Study 1, undergraduate students completed a perceived difficulty survey and comprehension pretest, then a sorting…

The complex processes of collaborative knowledge construction require a multimodal approach to capture the interplay between learners, tools, and the environment. While existing studies have recognized the importance of considering multiple modalities, there remains a need for a comprehensive framework that explicitly models the dynamics of…

There has been a long-standing debate on situational and symbolic mathematics, which is associated with how to design and execute mathematics education for all students. Brain studies can give some clues for how to deal with the debate. There are situational, verbalized, and visuospatial brain networks and the connectivity among the networks,…

When using the Internet to learn about complex topics or issues, students often encounter information that is both complementary and conflicting. Building on prior work identifying differences in how students reason about multiple conflicting texts, we examine students' connection formation and summative conceptualization of texts systematically…

Do we structure object-related conceptual information according to real-world sensorimotor experience, or can it also be shaped by linguistic information? This study investigates whether a feature of language coded in grammar--numeral classifiers--affects the conceptual representation of objects. We compared speakers of Mandarin (a classifier…

Background: Engineering students commonly learn domain knowledge by engaging with visual representations of it. However, at times they have trouble accessing information from these representations due to the way information is encoded in features of the representation. Purpose: To describe how students engage with representation features, we…

Context-Based Learning (CBL) and learning through developing and using models are two important teaching approaches for chemistry conceptual understanding. We aimed to examine the influence of a CBL approach on students' understanding of Multiple Models of Knowledge Representations ("MMKRs") and "multiple molecular…

Students try to understand many abstract concepts by using mental models they have created by thinking and imagining. Students must have a functional and dynamic atomic model in their minds in order to understand the atomic and atomic concepts. In this study; it was aimed to determine the models of science student candidates using the analogy of…

Abstract electronics concepts are difficult to develop because the phenomena of interest cannot be readily observed. Visualisation skills support learning about electronics and can be applied at different levels of representation and understanding (observable, symbolic and abstract). Providing learners with opportunities to make transitions…