This paper presents another effort in determining the difficulty of engineering students in terms of solving word problems. Students were presented with word problems in algebra. Then, they were asked to solve the word problems orally; that is, before they presented their written solutions, they were required to explain how they understood the…

Two consortia, the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (Smarter Balanced) and the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC), are currently developing comprehensive, technology-based assessment systems to measure students' attainment of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). The consequences of the consortia…

Collaborative and individual instruction may support different types of knowledge. Optimal instruction for a subject domain may therefore need to combine these two modes of instruction. There has not been much research, however, on combining individual and collaborative learning with Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITSs). A first step is to expand…

Although a large part the Physics Education Research (PER) literature investigates students' conceptual understanding in physics, these investigations focus on qualitative, conceptual reasoning. Even in modeling expert problem solving, attention to conceptual understanding means a focus on initial qualitative analysis of the problem; the equations…

Changes to students' understanding of mathematical notation may be brought about by using technology within mathematics. Taking equality as a case study, the paper provides brief epistemological, historical, didactical, and computational reviews of its symbolic representation in pen-and-paper and technology-assisted mathematics, most especially in…

We have been developing a digital concept maps website (www.conceptmapsforlearning.com) based on the principles of effective assessment for learning. The purpose of this paper is to reveal its promising contributions to formative evaluation practices. The website reduces the workload of teachers as well as provides immediate and delayed feedback…

Teachers and researchers have known for decades that the use of storybooks can have a positive impact on students' experiences with mathematics. This article describes how first graders in an urban public school actively engage with mathematics by using the story "Bean Thirteen" as a context for developing number sense. This…

There are two major categories of explanation for organisational performance: structural and individual. With the shift away from systems-theoretic accounts that occurred in the 1980s, structural explanations have been replaced increasingly by the individualism of leadership and leader-centric explanations, especially when it comes to schools. In…

The worked example effect indicates that learning by studying worked examples is more effective than learning by solving the equivalent problems. The expertise reversal effect indicates that this is only the case for novice learners; once prior knowledge of the task is available problem solving becomes more effective for learning. These effects,…

Employers value a four-year college degree, many of them more than ever. Yet half of those surveyed recently by "The Chronicle" and American Public Media's "Marketplace" said they had trouble finding recent graduates qualified to fill positions at their company or organization. Nearly a third gave colleges just fair to poor marks for producing…

People make errors in their creative problem-solving efforts. The intent of this article was to assess whether error-management training would improve performance on creative problem-solving tasks. Undergraduates were asked to solve an educational leadership problem known to call for creative thought where problem solutions were scored for…

In recent years, it has become apparent that knowledge is a critical component of creative thought. One form of knowledge that might be particularly important to creative thought relies on the mental models people employ to understand novel, ill-defined problems. In this study, undergraduates were given training in the use of causal relationships…

This experiment describes a discovery-based method for the regio- and stereoselective hydrochlorination of carvone, appropriate for a 3-h second-semester organic chemistry laboratory. The product is identified through interpretation of the [superscript 13]C NMR and DEPT spectra are obtained on an Anasazi EFT-60 at 15 MHz as neat samples. A…

General chemistry students often have difficulty writing balanced equations and performing stoichiometry calculations for precipitation reactions, in part because of difficulty understanding the symbolic notation used to represent chemical reactions. We have developed a problem-based experiment to improve student learning of these concepts, and…

Pondering a math problem while she swings her sneakered feet from a chair, 12-year-old Andrea Guevara is helping researchers design an assessment that will shape the learning of 19 million students. The 8th grader, who came to the United States from Ecuador three years ago, is trying out two ways of providing English-language support on a…