The growing use of programming in mathematics classrooms presents a challenge linked to implementation in general and task design in particular. This article presents design ideas for mathematical problems incorporating programming in which the focus remains mainly on learning mathematics and less on learning programming. The article starts by…

Cocreating meaning in collaboration is challenging. Success is often determined by people's abilities to coordinate their language to converge upon shared mental representations. Here we explore one set of low-level linguistic behaviors, linguistic alignment, that both emerges from, and facilitates, outcomes of high-level convergence. Linguistic…

Research on collaborative learning of computer science has been conducted primarily in programming. This paper extends this area by including short tasks (such as those used in contests like the Bebras Challenge) that cover many other computer science topics. The aim of this research is to explore how problem-solving in pairs differs from…

This paper describes the design, implementation, and results of a training action with prospective primary education teachers, focusing on the creation of problems involving proportional and algebraic reasoning. Prospective teachers must solve a proportionality problem using both arithmetic and algebraic procedures, and then vary it to motivate…

Metacognition plays an essential role in adults' cognitive offloading decisions. Despite possessing basic metacognitive capacities, however, preschool-aged children often fail to offload effectively. Here, we introduced 3- to 5-year-olds to a novel search task in which they were unlikely to perform optimally across trials without setting external…

Background: Problem-solving in early and middle childhood is of high relevance for cognitive developmental research and educational support. Previous research on science problem-solving has focussed on the process and strategies of children handling challenging tasks, but less on providing insights into the cognitive network that enables science…

Accurate monitoring of performance in problem-solving tasks is an important prerequisite for students' future academic success. A wide variety of interventions aiming to enhance students' monitoring accuracy have been developed, but their effectiveness is not apparent from the individual studies in which they have been examined. This meta-analysis…

This article reports on an empirical study that investigates the way students' performance in solving arithmetical tasks may be related to their performance in solving algebraic tasks. The sample consisted of 203 Grade 6 students. The arithmetical tasks involved arithmetical expressions with known quantities, whereas the algebraic tasks involved…

Information problem solving (IPS) is an important twenty-first century skill, but it is lacking at all age levels. One type of information problem, those of an ill-structured nature that require multiple iterations of (re)defining problems and formulating emerging solutions, can be particularly challenging but have received less attention in the…

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…

Invention activities and worked solutions are considered to be effective learning tasks. To date, limited research has been conducted regarding these tasks in teacher education and the process of solving these tasks. This study focuses on the solution quality of student teachers' task solutions. 149 students were randomly assigned to one of two…

Background and Context: Multiple studies report that experienced instructors lack consensus on the difficulty of programming tasks for novices. However, adequately gauging task difficulty is needed for alignment: to select and structure tasks in order to assess what students can and cannot do. Objective: The aim of this study was to examine…

The present study seeks to explore the mathematical connections that 13-14-year-old secondary school students establish when solving area tasks. Emphasis is placed on different mathematical objects, and the connections between them, that allow students to successfully solve the tasks. The study follows a mixed methodology using qualitative and…

In a study of 370 postsecondary students in electronics, engineering, and other science classes, we investigated collaborative problem-solving (CPS) skills that best predict performance at individual levels in an online electronics environment. The results showed that while monitoring was a consistent predictor across levels, other skills such as…

The area concept may appear in a wide range of problem situations. The representations used (geometrical, numerical and algebraic) in such situations entail particular practices that condition the partial area meanings. Thus, this study aims to characterize the partial area meanings mobilized in the resolution of area tasks. Each of the area…