This submission contains the Proceedings of the 2008 Annual Meeting of the Canadian Mathematics Education Study Group (CMESG), held at the Universite de Sherbrooke in Sherbrooke, Quebec. The CMESG is a group of mathematicians and mathematics educators who meet annually to discuss mathematics education issues at all levels of learning. The aims of…

Interpersonal, familial, and situational risk factors that predict young children's aggression and non-compliance are explored. Here examples of specific techniques and provided to help teachers and parents effectively support children's early development of cooperative and prosocial behaviours as well as problem-solving skills in family and…

This article presents a novel approach for explaining algorithms that aims to overcome various pedagogical limitations of the current visualization systems. The main idea is that at any given time, a learner is able to focus on a single problem. This problem can be explained, studied, understood, and tested, before the learner moves on to study…

Research has shown that adult learners prefer a problem-solving approach to learning, rather than a subject-centered approach. This book provides a non-traditional approach to teaching and learning the basics of human resource management through a series of 125 in-basket exercises and guided questions. These exercises focus on real-life problems…

Our study concerns the analysis of teacher and student activities. Secondary school 6th grade students were confronted, for the first time, with solving equations. We used our cognitive models of students and experts (in algebraic calculations) for analyzing the teaching process and the cognitive functioning of students. Our model led us to…

We investigated whether the findings from worked-out example research on the effects of self-explanation prompts and on instructional explanations can be generalized to other example types--in this case: solved example problems. Whereas worked-out examples consist of a problem formulation, solution steps, and the final solution, solved example…

Least squares regression is the most common method of fitting a straight line to a set of bivariate data. Another less known method that is available on Texas Instruments graphing calculators is median-median regression. This method is proposed as a simple method that may be used with middle and high school students to motivate the idea of fitting…

Transformational Events is a new pedagogic pattern that explains how innovations (and other transformations) happened. The pattern is three temporal stages: an interval of increasingly unsatisfactory ad hoc solutions to a persistent problem (the "mess"), an offer of an invention or of a new way of thinking, and a period of widespread adoption and…

This article demonstrates how the system archetype "drifting goals" can be used in the classroom to explore ethical dilemmas. System archetypes provide a framework that shifts the focus from seeing ethical dilemmas as stemming solely from the acts of individuals to exploring the systemic structures that are responsible for generic patterns of…

When undertaking design and technology activities, children are provided with opportunities to create solutions to problems in new and innovative ways. The mental processes involved in the generation of new ideas may be enhanced when children's attention is not focussed and is allowed to wander in a relaxed and uncompetitive environment. Research…

The purpose of this article is to review recent research on self-regulated learning and discuss the implications of this research for science education. We draw on examples of self-regulated learning from the science education literature to summarise and illustrate effective instructional methods and the development of metacognitive understanding…

This book explores how teachers use class meetings for a variety of purposes, from planning for a substitute teacher to planning a science unit. It also looks at how students can use class meetings to set class goals and monitor their progress in achieving them, to reflect on accumulated learning, and to solve common problems such as teasing,…

This study examined the impact of different styles of parental communication and teaching on children's problem solving, focusing on how parental teaching and communication styles affected children's performance on four problem-solving games involving deduction/categorization and planning. Thirty-two children ages 4 and 5 years and their families…

"Thinking Science," the Cognitive Acceleration through Science Education (CASE) curriculum, is a program designed for 11-14 year olds (in the first two years of secondary school) which encourages them to reflect on their own thinking and to develop their reasoning power in tackling novel problems. This study presents results that represent the…

An effective training program for preparing troubleshooters provides knowledge needed to understand the technology, teaches the process of troubleshooting, and provides the opportunity to practice using their knowledge and skill to diagnose faulty equipment. Recent research and common sense indicate many troubleshooting programs overemphasize…