This article describes Gapminder, a dynamic time-series graph that can be found at http://www.gapminder.org. Gapminder was created by a team of developers (Rosling, Ronnlund, and Rosling 2005) to create beautiful, interactive graphs of otherwise lifeless numbers. Their goal is increased use and understanding of statistics and data that…

Multiplication and division are complex constructs for young children to understand. In this article, the authors explore young children's ability to visualise and make groups of objects before they had formally been introduced to multiplication and division. The results provide some valuable insights into students' early understandings of…

In recent years, philosophical work directly concerned with the practice of mathematics has intensified, giving rise to a movement known as the "philosophy of mathematical practice." In this paper we offer a survey of this movement aimed at mathematics educators. We first describe the core questions philosophers of mathematical practice…

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of applications created using a web-based 3D design environment on the spatial visualisation and mental rotation abilities of secondary school students. A total of 63 school students from the sixth grade participated in the study. The researchers applied a mixed research method including both…

There is evidence that spatial thinking is malleable, and that spatial and mathematical skills are associated (Mix et al. [2016] "Journal of Experimental Psychology: General," 145, 1206; Mix et al. [2017] "Journal of Cognition and Development," 18, 465; Uttal et al. [2013] "Psychological Bulletin," 139, 352). However,…

Toddlers' understanding of object rotation was investigated using a multimethod approach. Participants were 44 toddlers between 22 and 38 months of age. In an eye-tracking task, they observed a shape that rotated and disappeared briefly behind an occluder. In an object-fitting task, they rotated wooden blocks and fit them through apertures.…

Light rays refract when passing through pockets of transparent fluids with different indices of refraction such as ordinary air pockets of varying temperature. This phenomenon makes night stars twinkle, distorts views above hot asphalt roads and hot barbeque grills, and provides an opportunity for visualizing the normally invisible movement of…

This paper discusses the potential of the creation and analysis of historical networks as didactic strategies in science education. To this end, we first argue the importance of combining critical approaches of the history of science with historical network research. This will be followed by a report of an empirical experiment in which the history…

Engaging learners with complex unfamiliar datasets is a known challenge in Data Science education. One promising phenomenon investigated in related work is perspective-taking. A first-person "actor" perspective can help facilitate group and individual sensemaking by mediating observations and actions taken by learners. Here we…

CAL (Computer Assisted Learning) programs are widespread today in schools and families due to the effectiveness of CAL programs in improving students' learning and task performance. The flourishing of CAL programs in education has brought large amounts of students' learning data including log data, performance data, mouse movement data, eye…

Performance in everyday spatial orientation tasks (e.g., map reading and navigation) has been considered functionally separate from performance on more abstract object-based spatial abilities (e.g., mental rotation and visualization). However, few studies have examined the link between spatial orientation and object-based spatial skills, and even…

Model fit indices are being increasingly recommended and used to select the number of factors in an exploratory factor analysis. Growing evidence suggests that the recommended cutoff values for common model fit indices are not appropriate for use in an exploratory factor analysis context. A particularly prominent problem in scale evaluation is the…

Ability of solving mathematical non-routine problems among Malaysian students remains at a low level, therefore there is a need to introduce a new and effective teaching strategy for the teaching and learning of mathematical problem solving. This study aims to determine the effectiveness of Mayer's problem solving Model with Visual Representation…

Pedagogical content knowledge of science teachers includes knowledge of representational forms, such as visual displays. Past research has provided a general means to evaluate pictures, but is not fine-grained on features internal to pictures. Furthermore, many existing picture function typologies consider pictures as subservient to text, though…

Controlling complexity through the use of abstractions is a critical part of problem solving in programming. Thus, becoming proficient with procedural and data abstraction through the use of user-defined functions is important. Properly using functions for abstraction involves a number of other core concepts, such as parameter passing, scope and…