Early critical thinking and sustainability awareness development is crucial for equipping future generations to handle global issues in an increasingly complicated and interconnected society. This study examined how 9-year-old primary school students applied their knowledge through a collaborative Mystery assignment, demonstrating a Thinking Skill…

Insights on students' own authentic design practices--nascent design practices without much adult guidance--are crucial to informing responsive facilitation of engineering design tasks. This study unpacks how elementary students interpret teacher given information about a design task, and interact with each other and given resources, to traverse a…

The aim of this study is to investigate Norwegian primary school students' multimodal mathematical reasoning when solving combinatorial problems. The data collection took place in four small groups of altogether thirteen 8-9 years old third-graders. Our study shows a variety of approaches used to solve the given combinatorial problems, such as…

The purpose of this study is to investigate the reflections that arise during the implementation of mathematical modeling activities with third-grade primary school students. To achieve this goal, a case study methodology was employed. The study consisted of 9 third-grade students (average age 8), selected through purposive sampling from a public…

Determining the most effective ways to support student-to-student talk requires some negotiating from a responsive teacher. This paper reports on a case study of two emergent multilingual students in Grade 3 (seven to eight-year-olds) who explained their strategies to each other. The transcript of their conversation was analysed using Chan and…

"Nature-based learning" is learning through exposure to nature and nature-based activities (Jordan and Chawla 2019). Nature and mathematics can be connected through teaching and learning with natural materials (objects from nature) or teaching and learning in outside spaces. In this article, the authors elaborate on the rationale for…

Background and Context: Various coding initiatives and materials exist such as those on Code.org site to promote students' computational thinking (CT). However, little is known as to: (a) whether such materials, in fact, promote CT and (b) how CT skills are related to each other. Objective: As a preliminary step to identify CT skills addressed in…

Compelling research evidence shows benefits for student learning from explaining one's ideas and engaging with the ideas of others. However, whether certain patterns of group interaction may engender this productive student participation is unknown. Using data from two third grade mathematics classrooms, and over the course of six days during a…

Educators, researchers, and policy makers recognize that student participation in classroom mathematics conversations, especially explaining one's own thinking and engaging with others' ideas, can promote students' mathematics learning. However, precisely "how" participating in these ways supports learning has not often been examined in…

The present study took a reciprocal learning approach to examine Canadian and Chinese elementary school students' (N=40) mathematics problem posing and problem solving. Data included student performance, Skype meeting videos, meeting notes, and interviews transcripts through direct and indirect interactions between a pair of Canadian and Chinese…

Get an inside look at the discourse interactions of third- and fourth-grade students as they consider various design proposals to solve an engineering problem and negotiate a group decision. The authors present possible factors that impact student teamwork and provide recommendations for teachers to develop students' skills for group engineering…

There is a substantial body of knowledge on the importance of language for learning in general, and for learning mathematics in particular. Hence, language skills and collaborative learning are emphasised in the Norwegian curriculum. Even so, we have few studies on what supports and what impedes mathematical progress in authentic learning…

Background and Context: Elementary computer science (CS) can be engaging and challenging for some students with disabilities who struggle with complex problem solving. Objective: This study examined academic engagement of students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in elementary CS instruction. Method: A mixed methods case study was used to study…

We report a qualitative analysis of elementary school students engaged in collaborative problem solving involving mathematical equivalence tasks. We build on previous research showing that students often use strategies based on either operational or relational understandings of the equal sign. We closely analyze three cases and identify nuanced…

This case study examined competence in two third-grade classrooms where teachers centered children's mathematical thinking in instructional decision-making. Offering a synthesis of sociocultural characterizations of competence, and drawing from a variety of data sources including classroom video, student work and assessments, and teacher…