"Complex systems" is a general-purpose reasoning scheme, used in a wide range of disciplines to make sense of systems with many similar entities. In this paper, we examine the generality of this approach in learning chemistry. Students' reasoning in chemistry in terms of emergent complex systems is explored for two curricula: a normative…

Cognitive conflict arises when students' expectation about a physical situation, such as the relative temperatures of metal and cloth, are not experimentally verified. The paper reviews this approach as a tool for promoting conceptual learning in undergraduate engineering courses, through three case studies. These cases demonstrate that cognitive…

Learning about neural communication can be a dry and challenging undertaking, particularly for students without a background in biology. To enhance learning of this and other STEM material, there has been a call for science educators to embrace the use of active learning techniques. The aim of this Brief Communication is to encourage the use of…

The aim of this study is to examine the effect of a digital game designed within the framework of hierarchic interactionalism theory on the development of the concept of area in secondary school students. The digital game used in this study was designed after being influenced by the preliminary concepts and skills related to the concept of area…

Knowledge of conservation and conflict resolution is crucial for young children's academic and socio-emotional success. Dialogic instruction implemented in kindergarten classrooms is essential for young children's cognitive development and problem-solving abilities. Storybooks incorporate content knowledge and real-life experiences enhance…

This paper describes a pilot study that explores students learning how to program via a multi-disciplinary approach. The study participants were eleven 6th grade students who learned programming fundamentals via music activities in a Scratch 3.0 environment. These activities included the programming of familiar melodies and the development of…

Our ability to recognize familiar faces is remarkable. During the process of becoming familiar with new people we acquire both perceptual and conceptual information about them. Which of these two types of information contributes to our ability to recognize a person in future encounters? Previously, we showed that associating faces with…

Games have been used as instructional tools throughout history. Educational experiences are more effective when learners are active participants, and when teachers carefully choose fun games with appropriate game mechanics and clear curricular connections, students can engage in rigorous mental processes. At the same time, students may learn a…

The primary goals of this study are to investigate if cognitive activation increases mathematics self-efficacy, which in turn alleviates anxiety and to examine the moderating role of internal migrant status. Hierarchical linear models and multilevel structural equation models were employed to datasets of 3088 fourth graders from 57 classrooms in…

Recent voices in creativity research emphasize the vital role that processes of active engagement and interaction play. These distributed, interactivity-based, and ecological accounts critique the reduction of creativity to mental mechanisms and eschew the methodological individualism that underlies this view. Instead, they elevate socio-material…

Education is central to the acquisition of knowledge, such as when children learn new concepts. It is unknown, however, whether educational differences impact not only what concepts children learn, but how those concepts come to be represented in semantic memory--a system that supports higher cognitive functions, such as creative thinking. Here we…

This study investigated Chinese international students' sense of belonging by exploring the cultural and cognitive validity of a commonly used sense of belonging instrument, namely the Hoffman et al.'s (2002) Sense of Belonging Scale. Cognitive interviewing procedures supplemented with open-ended questions were administered to 20 sophomore- and…

This research focuses on students' higher-order cognitive skill (HOCS)-oriented learning to construct effective hierarchical thinking abilities in their chemical particulate nature of matter. For in-depth knowledge and profound understanding, this research deals with students' positive developments towards HOCS with a special guidance to Marzanos'…

Cognitive difficulty arises from two types of cognitive processes: treatments; within the same, conversions; between different types of representational registers. Conversions are difficult since they ask for understanding of two representations. Direction and the choice of first register could be a threshold for the student. Wasan geometry is…

Understanding the cognitive processes central to mathematical development is crucial to addressing systemic inequities in math achievement. We investigate the "Groupitizing" ability in 1209 third to eighth graders (mean age at first timepoint = 10.48, 586 girls, 39.16% Asian, 28.88% Hispanic/Latino, 18.51% White), a process that captures…