"Productive Struggle: How Artificial Intelligence is Changing Learning, Effort, and Youth Development in Education," recently released by Bellwether, considers the role of GenAI in education. It proposes a criterion for evaluating these new technologies' impact on student learning: When does ease afforded by GenAI enable greater…

Diffusion is a critical component of the Physiology Core Concept of flow down gradients and is fundamental to understanding how ions, gases, or signaling molecules travel short distances in the body. When asked about diffusion, students often reason successfully using the "things move from areas of high to low concentration" heuristic…

This study examines the implementation of environmental education in the STEAM approach for sustainability. A STEAM model for engaging students in environmental sustainability programs through problem-solving. The main focus of the study was to identify how the pre-service teacher practices the STEAM innovation in mathematics classrooms. Five…

This study investigates the development of students' problem-solving skills in technology-enhanced learning (TEL) environments, focusing on the interplay between domain knowledge, metacognitive strategies, and fading scaffolding. Through a design-based research approach, we engaged three eighth-grade classes (N=75) in a physics-based…

The days of "deep learning for some, rote learning for most" are over. Project based learning (PBL) is a powerful educational approach that empowers students to: (1) Engage with authentic content; (2) Co-construct knowledge; (3) Work to solve real-world problems; and (4) Develop lifelong learning skills. Access to these foundational…

In this paper, we report the analysis of thought processes used by Pre-Service Teachers' (PSTs') through clinical interviews as they solved an algebra task involving a linear pattern. The PST's were asked about a mathematical model they had constructed to describe a pattern problem. Our analysis suggests that conflict factors arise due to…

This article provides an overview of the diverse ways in which computational thinking has been operationalised in the literature. Computational thinking has attracted much interest and debatably ranks in importance with the time-honoured literacy skills of reading, writing, and arithmetic. However, learning interventions in this subject have…

This paper presents the results of a 2-year longitudinal study aimed at characterizing and comparing the design cognition of high school students with and without formal engineering design experiences. The students--working as dyads--engaged in design-only sessions generating solutions in response to the same engineering design challenges. The…

Context-aware mobile learning applications provide learning materials to suit the needs of individual learners. Despite several applications developed, there is a lack of architectural support for developing these applications. This has resulted in a number of challenges; lack of standardization, poor quality of developed applications, and…

The study examines the collaborative nature of problem solving as dyads and triads of adults were grouped to solve digital problems using online resources. Digital problem solving involves the nimble use of skills, strategies, and mindsets to navigate online in everyday contexts using novel resources, tools, and interfaces, in efficient and…

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…

Infants start to use a spoon for self-feeding at the end of the first year of life, but usually do not use unfamiliar tools to solve problems before the age of 2 years. We investigated to what extent 18-month-old infants who are familiar with using a spoon for self-feeding are able to generalize this tool-use ability to retrieve a distant object.…

We explore the various Mathematica functions for performing Gaussian elimination, specifically when the linear system contains input parameters. On the one hand, we want the solution, perhaps heuristically found, to be in terms of the input parameters, and as general as possible. On the other hand, we must adhere to all necessary conditions and…

The cross diagram is a way to illustrate and plan the solutions for all kinds of constant-acceleration kinematics problems--including projectile motion, multistage, and multiple-object problems. The cross diagram arranges the kinematic variables in a logical way, making the kinematic relationships between them easy to identify. Combined with a…

Productive Failure is an instructional approach in which students engage in problem-solving attempts prior to instruction. The Productive Failure approach has been found to be more supportive for conceptual knowledge acquisition during subsequent instruction compared to a direct-instruction condition in which students receive instruction first…