In 1996, Graham Richards published "Putting Psychology in its Place: An introduction from a critical historical perspective." Here, I seek to consider what is or should be the "place" of Psychology in education, more particularly Higher Education, and not just from a historical perspective. This raises issues about several…

The overreliance on linear methods in students' reasoning and problem solving has been documented and discussed by several scholars in the field. So far, however, there have been no attempts to assemble the evidence and to analyze it is a systematic way. This article provides an overview and a conceptual analysis of students' tendency to use…

This article investigates the complex interrelation between ethnic and gender diversity, process and performance among groups of business students. The article is based on an empirical survey of business students working on a complex assignment in groups of two to five in a small Swedish university. The results indicate that gender diversity leads…

For many years, the author has been involving his students in classroom teaching of their own classes. The day-to-day practice is described, and the advantages and disadvantages for both the instructor and the students are discussed. Comparisons with the Moore Method of teaching are made.

Monkeys are the problems that need solutions, the tasks that need to be accomplished, the decisions that need to be made, and the actions that need to be taken. According to a theory, people carry monkeys around on their backs until they can successfully shift their burden to someone else and the monkey leaps from one back to the next. Managers…

Ninety-nine families with a school-age child participated in this study, aimed at analysing the relationship between parenting and children's help seeking. The parenting data included self-reports on parents' child-rearing principles and behavioural observations during parent-child interactions. To test help seeking, the children were placed in a…

Two studies investigated the effects of a storytelling-context for teaching geometry skills to kindergarten girls and boys. In Study 1, the story+geometry intervention consisted of an adventure story teaching geometry through part-whole-relations puzzles. Learning was assessed through transfer of skills, using a pre-/post design comparing…

This paper presents the results of an investigation into the various ways in which pre-service and in-service teachers experience learning to program in an object-oriented language. Both groups of teachers were enrolled in university courses. In most cases, the pre-service teachers were learning to program for the first time, while the in-service…

The algebraic competence of 72 12-year-old female students was examined to identify profiles of understanding reflecting different algebraic knowledge states. Beginning algebraic competence (mapping abilities: word-to-symbol and vice versa, classifying, and solving equations) was assessed. One week later, the nature of assistance required to map…

In this work we show how specific challenges related to sustainable development can be integrated into chemical engineering education by introducing an environmental management system in the laboratory where the students perform their experimental lessons. It is shown how the system has been developed and implemented in the laboratory, what role…

This article describes a teaching module designed to enhance engineering creativity in an introductory chemical engineering course. The module includes an exercise to design column packing material, and an open-ended research project to describe the societal impact of chemical engineering. These assignments were created to illustrate the benefit…

A highly flexible learning tool, referred to as a dynamic reaction figure, is described. Application of these figures can (i) yield the correct chemical equation by simply following a set of menu driven directions; (ii) present the underlying "mechanism" in chemical reactions; and (iii) help to solve quantitative problems in a number of different…

This study investigated the motor strategy involved in mental rotation tasks by examining 2 types of spontaneous gestures (hand-object interaction gestures, representing the agentive hand action on an object, vs. object-movement gestures, representing the movement of an object by itself) and different types of verbal descriptions of rotation.…

We report on the contents and results for 360 students of a mathematics assessment administered at the start of the second-semester introductory chemistry course required for science and engineering majors at the University of Minnesota. This calculator-free, 20-question, 30-minute, multiple-choice, diagnostic quiz includes questions selected…

In this interview, Peter Atkins explains the deep motivations that compel him to sit at his desk at 6 AM writing books and textbooks. He discusses the four principal elements that help to make a chemistry textbook successful, including the secret ingredient. He also discusses the importance of problem solving, the interaction of multimedia, and…