This study examines the epistemic beliefs about justification employed by physics undergraduate and graduate students and faculty in the context of solving a standard classical physics problem and a frontier physics problem. Data were collected by a think-aloud problem solving session followed by a semi-structured interview conducted with 50…

In this paper we look at the ways in which the experience of the natural environment was made available to the pupils and the types of activities provided for specific engagement with the local natural environment. It draws upon research undertaken for the Well-being and Outdoor Pedagogies project and previous PhD research. These projects explored…

The article deals with the way in which authority was established and interpreted by teachers and students in two Flemish sixth-grade mathematics classrooms. Problem-solving lessons during a seven-month observation period were analysed regarding three aspects of teacher-student interactions that explicitly or implicitly reflect who bears…

In this research we present the use of some technologies in problem solving activities (at different secondary school grades), aimed at finding a model for a geometric configuration, and representing this model in various ways: through a construction, through a Cartesian graph, etc. The task is part of a teaching experiment, in which students used…

The present study aims to investigate the effects of a design experiment developed for third-grade students in the field of mathematics word problems. The main focus of the program was developing students' knowledge about word problem solving strategies with an emphasis on the role of visual representations in mathematical modeling. The experiment…

A perceived difficulty is associated with physics problem solving from a learner's viewpoint, arising out of a multitude of reasons. In this paper, we have examined the microstructure of students' thought processes during physics problem solving by combining the analysis of responses to multiple-choice questions and semistructured student…

In this article, the authors discuss how educators can engage students in real world learning using their academic knowledge and technical skills. They describe how school districts have discovered that the world of robotics can help students use technical skills to solve simulated problems found in the real world, while understanding the…

Much attention has been devoted in the literature to students' struggles with fraction division. With regard to the traditional invert and multiply algorithm, researchers and educators have examined such areas as typical errors, how to help students understand why this method works, and what alternatives are available that might be more intuitive.…

As a fifth-grade mathematics teacher, the author tries to create authentic problem-solving activities that connect to the world in which his students live. He discovered a natural connection to his students' real world at a computer camp. A friend introduced him to Alice, a computer application developed at Carnegie Mellon, under the leadership of…

Mr. Carter is about to start a two-day lesson on subtraction of integers with his sixth-grade prealgebra students. He plans to use contextualized problems that will allow his students to develop an interpretation of subtraction that involves the idea of "difference." This article outlines one way to teach students develop number line…

Although any mainstream thought is subject to theoretical challenges, the challenges to the mainstream cognitive perspective on transfer have had an unfortunate divisive effect. This article takes a pragmatic view that transfer perspectives are simply designed objects (Plomp & Nieveen, 2007), which provide different information for different…

Negotiation of language form is thought to engage learning processes by helping learners to notice gaps in their developing L2 and find target-like ways of filling them. Self-transcription, where learners work together to find language errors in recordings of their own oral output, is an awareness raising exercise that encourages such negotiation.…

This study sought to find student perceptions of how the engineering design process is learned and applied by pre-service teachers at the University of Georgia. The course description read "demonstration and hands-on learning, including problem solving, designing, construction and testing of prototypes, and activities that increase aesthetic,…

This article describes some problems of the maximum/minimum type, which are generally solved using calculus at secondary school, but which here are solved algebraically. We prove six algebraic properties and then apply them to this kind of problem. This didactic approach allows pupils to solve these problems even at the beginning of secondary…

When given the opportunity to work with mentor programs in schools, this author has recommended a global prescription for mentors to help new teachers make the transition into the world of teaching: encourage them to follow the practices that are most like those of good, experienced teachers. Experienced teachers are different from new teachers;…