The authors designed a course--Origami and Geometry--and describe one of the activities in which origami was used to fold a regular dodecahedron. They find that origami can provide students with concrete material for observing geometrical structures and give them opportunities to examine their thoughts on geometry.

The use of clickers in the classroom has been linked to student learning. However, studies that examine the effects of clickers on learning often conceptualize a clicker exercise as a single, homogeneous cognitive processing (CP) event. We offer a conceptualization of sequenced cognitive activities that unfold during a clicker exercise. An…

Taking as a point of departure that consciousness of time is pivotal to historical consciousness, this paper explores intuitive temporal experiences as opposed to the less intuitive temporal experience connected with historical consciousness. The intuitive daily/cyclic, social and mythical temporal awareness is being opposed to historical…

The research literature on the topic of "spatial ability" reveals that it has a major influence on achievement in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Additionally, previous studies indicate the existence of a gender gap in spatial ability in favour of males. Mental rotation, one subskill of spatial ability, is…

Practice problems and worked examples are both well-established teaching techniques. Research in math and physics suggests that having students study worked examples during their first contact with new material, instead of solving practice problems, can be beneficial to their subsequent performance, possibly due to the reduced cognitive load…

Studies comparing the instructional effectiveness of dynamic versus static visualizations have produced mixed results. In this work, we investigated whether gender imbalance in the participant samples of these studies may have contributed to the mixed results. We conducted a meta-analysis of randomized experiments in which groups of students…

A substantial degree of empirical evidence has illustrated the correlation between spatial skills and performance in engineering education. This evidence has been foundational in the construction of educational interventions which have resulted in both increased levels of spatial ability and increased educational performance and retention.…

Thinking is a common process. Cognitive ability includes knowledge, memory and metacognition. Knowledge requires memory. These two are inextricably linked. Parents and teachers need to encourage children to take an active role in their learning and show them how to use what they know to the best advantage. Cognition is primarily a mental process.…

Current research into reflective pedagogy in dance almost exclusively discusses the tertiary education population. Additionally, the research is primarily focused on concert modern dance and creative dance pedagogies, techniques, and choreography. Ballet technique programs in precollegiate populations have, so far, been left out of the…

Students of all ages can learn to think like artists! "Studio Thinking: The Real Benefits of Visual Arts Education" changed the conversation about quality arts education. This new publication shows how the eight Studio Habits of Mind and four Studio Structures can be used successfully with younger students in a range of socioeconomic…

In the paper, the results of a study into a problem of cognitive barriers (difficulties) related to the third component of a pedagogical triad "how to teach what to teach to how to be learned study" are reported. At the first stage, methodical approaches to academic performance rating for students learning mathematical and…

Background: Teaching is more complex than dealing with the cognitive aspects of learning alone and is also influenced by affective states. Because of this, more research is needed into the role of teachers' emotions in classroom interaction. Of special importance is research into reflective thinking and the extent to which it may be disturbed by…

Unlike the other studies on emotional design in multimedia learning, the present study differentiated the two confounding variables of visual interface design and structured content to manipulate the instructional material. Specifically, we investigated how the visual aesthetics of positive emotional interface design influenced learners' cognitive…

Background: Studies have reported positive effects of physical activity on cognitive executive functions, such as inhibitory control and creativity. These studies predominantly compared scenarios of sports participation vs. no sports participation or reduced sports to simple aerobic exercises. However, whether the type or intensity of physical…

This case study examined teachers' on-the-fly formative assessment conversations, that is, how teachers collect information from students' thinking and use that information to support their learning during teacher-student interactions. Previous studies have typically analysed whole-class discussions on the level of speaking turns, and have…