Mental training has been employed successfully by experienced musicians, but rarely explored with younger learners. Considering its benefits, however, including the use and development of predictive, feedforward processes, identified in neuroscience as being central to playing a musical instrument, this mixed qualitative-quantitative study…

The objective of this study is to compare the effectiveness of EMBE-R and verification strategies in eliminating the rate of reaction (RR) misconceptions on different scientific reasoning capabilities (SRC) and improving students' understanding of concepts in chemical equilibrium (CE). This quasi-experimental design involved two homogeneous…

How do individuals create a knowledge base over a lifetime? Charles Darwin left detailed records of every book he read from "The Voyage of the Beagle" to just after publication of "The Origin of Species." Additionally, he left copies of his drafts before publication. I use these records to build a case study of how reading and…

Building conceptual knowledge that generalizes to novel situations is a key function of human memory. Category-learning paradigms have long been used to understand the mechanisms of knowledge generalization. In the present study, we tested the conditions that promote formation of new concepts. Participants underwent 1 of 6 training conditions that…

A fundamental goal of education is to inspire and instill deep, meaningful, and long-lasting conceptual change within the knowledge landscapes of students. This commentary posits that the tools of network science could be useful in helping educators achieve this goal in two ways. First, methods from cognitive psychology and network science could…

The topic of physical and chemical changes is one of the basic and essential issues of both the lowersecondary school science curriculum and the upper-secondary school chemistry curriculum in many countries. The focus of the present study is to investigate the students' cognitive structures on the topic of physical and chemical changes at…

At present, environmental issues are of concern to all countries, especially for developing countries, and education on waste sorting is urgent. However, it remains a challenge to improve students' learning achievement and engagement in environmental education. Researchers have pointed out the potential of digital games for promoting students'…

A solid foundation in mathematics is beneficial not only for individuals' concurrent and later academic achievement, but also for future career success and financial stability. Rational number knowledge plays a pivotal role in mathematical success, yet it is often regarded as a challenging area to grasp comprehensively. The dissertation aims to…

This qualitative study aimed to examine: (1) the manner in which kindergarten children and first graders make sense of the term "area" regarding optimization problems; (2) how this manner is manifested in their decision-making and "STEAM" (science, technology, engineering, art and math) skills; and (3) how kindergarten children…

In physics and chemistry, the development of problem-solving skills is necessary to become an expert. A simple cognitive model to analyse such development is proposed and tested. An exploratory research was conducted with expert professors and students in initial and advanced years. A think aloud procedure was used to obtain relevant data while…

Background: Prior research with adults and children suggests that inhibitory control may have a role to play in learning counterintuitive fractions and decimals that are inconsistent with whole number knowledge. However, there is little research to date with primary school-aged children at the early stages of fraction and decimal instruction that…

Students often use incoherent strategies in their problem solving involving force and motion, as revealed, e.g. when they are asked to draw force diagrams for amusement rides involving circular motion, whether in horizontal or vertical planes. Depending on the questions asked, assignments involving circular motion can reveal different types of…

Mathematics education scholars have generally classified students' conception of the equal sign as either operational or relational. Adding to these conceptions, Jones (2008) introduced the idea of substitutional conception. Building off these scholars, I introduce a form of understanding the equal sign that includes a transformative equivalence…

There is a lack of research on students' conceptions of giftedness and intelligence, despite recognition of their influence on real-life factors such as achievement and motivation. This paper presents a cross-sectional mixed methods study that investigated Finnish students' (age 6-16 years; N = 1282) implicit conceptions of giftedness and…

Pictorial representations are often used to help children understand the situation described in a given number-sentence scheme. These static pictorial problems essentially attempt to depict a dynamic situation (e.g., one bird flies away while there are three birds still sitting on the fence). Previous research suggested that such pictorial…