Many studies indicate that knowledge and knowledge production are the main predictors of social development, welfare and the ability to face the future with confidence. It could be argued that knowledge production is mainly carried out by universities. This study compares 1266 scientific research projects (SRPs) completed by faculties of education…

In a rapidly changing world, students' success depends upon the schools' capacity to deal with their specific instructional needs. Thus, effective teaching plays the role of a unique protective factor that may reduce and even close the achievement gap. Two broad questions structure this study: What is the research contribution to teacher quality…

The last couple of decades have seen an enormous development in the study of embodied cognition through the investigation of conceptual mappings, such as conceptual metaphor and conceptual blending. Initially, this progress was achieved at a theoretical level, and more recently through empirical research in basic science--from psycholinguistics,…

In a significant article from 1993, Crum describes the purpose of physical education (PE) as a "planned introduction into movement culture". In broad terms, this purpose is tantamount to the stated purpose of Swedish PE in national steering documents. Crum contends, however, that physical educators do not prioritise learning, which is…

The 8th International Conference on Educational Data Mining (EDM 2015) is held under auspices of the International Educational Data Mining Society at UNED, the National University for Distance Education in Spain. The conference held in Madrid, Spain, July 26-29, 2015, follows the seven previous editions (London 2014, Memphis 2013, Chania 2012,…

One of the challenges of traditional student learning, from an instructor's perspective, involves achieving an understanding of how students learn. Q-method is an effective approach to improve understanding of human subjectivity, and, as this research suggests, it is an appropriate tool to assist educators to better understand how students learn.…

There are many definitions of learning, all reflecting the academic specialties from which the study is conducted: 1. the process of acquiring knowledge, skills, attitudes, values, beliefs, emotions, senses, etc.; 2. the sum total of the process of acquiring knowledge, skills etc, e.g., a learned person; and 3. sometimes, wrongly used as a synonym…

This article is based on experiences and convictions from teaching leadership to students on the university and college levels. Teaching through leadership rather than about leadership is advocated. Student learning and facilitator teaching are contrasted. Leadership is viewed more as a mutual relationship rather than certain personality traits of…

The variation theory of Ference Marton and his collaborators has widely been used as a framework for explaining what can possibly be learned in a particular classroom and what cannot. This paper reports on an experiment that put this theory to test in the context of students' learning of the orthographic structures of Chinese characters. The…

Past research has shown that children will copy the actions of adults with high fidelity, even actions that are obviously causally irrelevant to the modelled outcome. However, this phenomenon has always been documented in cases where a clear functional outcome has been brought about (e.g. getting a box open to retrieve a toy). Here, we demonstrate…

The project method became a famous teaching method when William Heard Kilpatrick published his article "Project Method" in 1918. The key idea in Kilpatrick's project method is to try to explain how pupils learn things when they work in projects toward different common objects. The same idea of pupils learning by work or action in an…

Recent research has extended student modeling to infer not just whether a student knows a skill or set of skills, but also whether the student has achieved robust learning--learning that enables the student to transfer their knowledge and prepares them for future learning (PFL). However, a student may fail to have robust learning in two fashions:…

Previous work has shown that children are able to make a spatial inference about adjacent locations that have only been experienced indirectly (Hazen, Lockman, & Pick, 1978). We sought to replicate this finding in rats, on a conceptually analogous task. In a first experiment, rats (n = 8) were given 110 training trials on a task in which they…

The present two studies investigated whether semantic as well as evaluative stimulus aspects can be conditioned to neutral stimuli. In Study 1, pictures of large and small objects were paired with neutral stimuli (conditioned stimuli (CSs)). The subsequently assessed size and likeability ratings indicated that valence as well as size was…

Previous research has shown the difficulty of enhancing students' approaches to learning, in particular the deep approach, through student-centred teaching methods such as problem- and case-based learning. This study investigates whether mixed instructional methods combining case-based learning and lectures have the power to enhance students'…