Examines how teachers can use principles of persuasion to structure lessons and units of study to help students in conceptual reorganization and growth of cognitive problem- solving processes, reviewing research on persuasion as a change process and on the viability of persuasion as a metaphor for teaching, and discussing the implications of the…

Explains the concept of mole and presents a teaching approach in which students can experiment with atoms and develop an understanding of mass ratios. Presents 10 examples of chemistry problems involving moles and unit conversations. (YDS)

Evidence-based medicine--the process of using research findings systematically as the basis for clinical decisions--can be taught using problem-solving teaching methods. Evaluates whether it was possible to motivate students to use the original literature by giving them selected patient problems to solve. (Author/ASK)

Reviews the problem solving approach in chemistry and explains effective instructional methods for teaching problem solving. (YDS)

Introduces a three-year research project called Cognitive Acceleration through Science Education (CASE) that focuses on increasing student achievement by developing thinking skills. (YDS)

Explores the challenges facing college and university residence hall facility managers and how different schools address these issues in diverse ways. Ongoing concerns involving funding needs and maintenance are examined followed by discussions on the new challenges in managing student life, health, and safety. Concluding comments reveal where…

Describes how the author allows the children to make choices about their art and writing, enabling them to make connections between their own lives and work. Suggests that educators need to provide doorways to the things that give students ideas: books, music, objects, pictures, smells, sounds, and textures. (SG)

This review of recent literature, focusing on the integration of mathematics and reading, highlights three reading stances within mathematics classrooms. The first stance, reading problems, highlights the scope-and-sequence, transmission approach to learning mathematics, where the purpose of reading is to figure out how to solve an immediate…

This article describes competitions across a range of curricular areas that develop students' problem solving skills by setting authentic, real-world tasks. As individuals or members of a team, students in these competitions are challenged with finding solutions to problems faced not only in today's scientific and technological world, but also in…

The fields of mathematics, science, and engineering are replete with diagrams of many varieties. They range in nature from the Venn diagrams of symbolic logic to the Periodic Chart of the Elements; and from the fault trees of risk assessment to the flow charts used to describe laboratory procedures, industrial processes, and computer programs. All…

An acronym, a word formed from the first letters of other words, is often used to name products or organizations. For example, when Hermione Granger, a very clever student at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, is enraged over the wizarding world's treatment of house-elves, she creates an organization to help put an end to this injustice.…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of two types of maps (generative vs. completed) and the amount of prior knowledge (high vs. low) on well-structured and ill-structured problem-solving performance. Forty-four undergraduates who were registered in an introductory instructional technology course participated in the study.…

This article discusses the benefits of constructivism for both teachers and students. The author believes that teachers can increase student engagement in expressive performance learning without giving up performance quality.

This article analyses the modeling approach used by one student in a business problem. It is argued that if we use previous frameworks we are not able to classify the students' approach to modeling as purely theoretical or empirical. Instead the student used a theoretical approach when constructing a real model, but abandoned it when she had to…

Two questions are asked that concern the work of teaching high school geometry with problems and engaging students in building a reasoned conjecture: What kinds of negotiation are needed in order to engage students in such activity? How do those negotiations impact the mathematical activity in which students participate? A teacher's work is…