This study focuses on vocational education teachers' instructional activities in a new technology-enhanced learning (TEL) setting. A content analysis is applied to investigate teachers' and students' interactions in a 3D game context. The findings illustrate that when teachers' and students' interactions are mediated by a…

Making the connection between science and technology might be important for students to learn to identify and solve problems and to acquire scientific knowledge and skills. The research reported in this article concerned the development of a design situation in a science classroom and the study of students performing in this situation. More…

This paper conceptualizes spatial literacy as consisting of three overlapping domains: visualization, reasoning, and communication. By considering these domains, this study explores different aspects of spatial literacy to better understand how a group of mathematics teachers reasoned about spatial tasks. Seventy-five preservice and inservice…

Designing solutions to social problems requires some degree of interpretive accountability to the sociocultural systems in which design solutions must live. Our case studies show how ethnography of communication research generates distinctive resources for design. (Contains 5 notes.)

The development of academic literacy requires students to think critically about multiple text types. Picturebooks can be rich and varied resources on which to base well-designed instruction that will facilitate thinking, discussions, connections, and problem solving in multiple content areas. From the Holocaust to ecology to grammar, picturebooks…

Much research in engineering and physics education has focused on improving students' problem-solving skills. This research has led to the development of step-by-step problem-solving strategies and grading rubrics to assess a student's expertise in solving problems using these strategies. These rubrics value "communication" between the…

Einstein was blessed with a rare genius. He also understood the intellectual weight of a flight of fancy. He turned over the idea in his mind for a decade before concluding that the light beam next to him would appear to be at rest even though it was traveling at the speed of light. While it may be tempting to focus on Einstein's cognitive…

In this paper a two-stage research study is described focused on problem solving relevant to place-value and on the use of the operations within the calculator environment. The findings show that in this specific environment and via appropriate tasks teachers are provided with a context to better understand what year 5 or 6 pupils know or do not…

In this article I describe the analytic approach adopted by Peters, his colleagues and followers of the "London line" in the 1960s and 1970s and argue that, even in those times, other approaches to philosophy of education were being valued and practised. I show that Peters and his colleagues later became aware of the need for philosophy of…

Designers of interactive learning environments with a focus on word problem solving usually have to compromise between the amount of resolution paths that a user is allowed to follow and the quality of the feedback provided. We have built an intelligent tutoring system (ITS) that is able to both track the user's actions and provide adequate…

The use of manipulatives to teach mathematics is often prescribed as an efficacious teaching strategy. To examine the empirical evidence regarding the use of manipulatives during mathematics instruction, we conducted a systematic search of the literature. This search identified 55 studies that compared instruction with manipulatives to a control…

This article situates the "Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing" in current educational policy and in the discipline of rhetoric and composition. It argues the Framework positions the discipline to address gaps in American education by reinvigorating historical and traditional frames for writing instruction--ancient rhetoric and the…

Mental-rotation ability modestly predicts chemistry achievement. As such, sex differences in mental-rotation ability have been implicated as a causal factor that can explain sex differences in chemistry achievement and degree attainment. Although there is a correlation between mental-rotation ability and chemistry achievement, laboratory and field…

The CHROM Web applet has been used to create a new active-learning exercise in which students design a purification scheme for a recombinant protein using ion-exchange chromatography (IEC). To successfully complete the exercise, students are challenged to apply elementary concepts from acid-base chemistry as well as protein and amino acid…

This article discusses a writing project that offers students the opportunity to solve one of the most famous geometric problems of Greek antiquity; namely, the impossibility of trisecting the angle [pi]/3. Along the way, students study the history of Greek geometry problems as well as the life and achievements of Carl Friedrich Gauss. Included is…