The article offers six suggestions to help educators teach for true understanding: identify concepts and multiple meanings; create appropriate definitions; pay attention to prior knowledge; provide examples; focus on central elements of the concept; and establish solid evaluation procedures. (SM)

The nine essays of this anthology attempt to apply some ideas of the French philosopher/historian Michel Foucault (1926-84) to past and present school practice. However, to follow Foucault's lead is to risk embracing a state of perpetual uncertainty about the fabrication of knowledge and power. (SLD)

Explores the meaning of understanding and the importance of teaching for understanding. Typical classrooms do not give sufficient presence to thoughtful engagement in understanding performance. How to teach for learning is reviewed, focusing on both teaching and assessment. The need for generative knowledge is discussed. (SLD)

Discusses the problem-based learning format as it relates to the education of medical students. Describes key objectives in the education of physicians and questions how effective medical schools are in achieving those key objectives using a problem-based format. (CCM)

Explores the influence of offering different instructions to undergraduate students prior to their learning an expository text on evolutionary biology. Participants were asked to either explain, summarize, or listen to another's explanation. Overall, explainers outperformed summarizers. Moreover, the teach-through-explanation condition had the…

Interviews 22 high school precalculus students to examine their understanding of slope as measure. Indicates that students demonstrated a better understanding of slope in functional situations, but many students had trouble interpreting slope as measure of rate of change. Suggests that instruction should focus on helping students form connections…

This article explores why art education after modernism needs to engage with and assess two forms of knowledge. It distinguishes procedural knowledge or "knowing how" from declarative knowledge or 'knowing that", and argues that current classroom practice and more general thinking in art education in the UK confuses evidence of…

One of the most important goals in primary education is to guarantee literacy and numeracy, two crucial notational systems. Before schooling, children develop some fundamental knowledge on notations from which formal learning should depart. The literature has studied this knowledge, focusing on the development of notational production and…

Many students struggle with college mathematics topics due to a lack of mastery of prerequisite knowledge. Set theory language is one such prerequisite for linear algebra courses. Many students' mistakes on linear algebra questions reveal a lack of mastery of set theory knowledge. This paper reports the findings of a qualitative analysis of a…

The research reported in this paper is focused directly on assessing the validity of the "Teaching Knowledge about Reading and Reading Practices" (TKRRP) assessment. Following the recommendations of the Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing (APA/AERA, 1999), the authors see validation as a process of constructing an…

In most teacher education courses, instructional strategies are merely listed and explained. Students rarely have the opportunity to see these strategies in use until they become student teachers. What better way to teach secondary instructional strategies to pre-service teachers than by modeling these strategies using teacher education content?…

The dual purpose of this article is to provide a synthesis of the findings related to the use of computer simulations in physics education and to present implications for teachers and researchers in science education. We try to establish a conceptual framework for the utilization of computer simulations as a tool for learning and instruction in…

In this paper we explore the possibilities for redesigning pedagogy in the middle years of schooling. We think that the middle schooling movement in Australia is unfinished because the pedagogical reforms promised have been patchy, not well researched and difficult to sustain. As well, middle schooling is a little exhausted because it has failed…

Jean Louis Nicolet is a Swiss teacher of mathematics who found his subject so fascinating that he was puzzled as to why so many pupils could not share this enjoyment in their studies. He came to a conclusion which is now supported by the results of psychological research into the learning process: he suggested that the mind does not spontaneously…

The 10th International Conference on Educational Data Mining (EDM 2017) is held under the auspices of the International Educational Data Mining Society at the Optics Velley Kingdom Plaza Hotel, Wuhan, Hubei Province, in China. This years conference features two invited talks by: Dr. Jie Tang, Associate Professor with the Department of Computer…