A total of 136 eighth-grade math students from 2 Singapore schools learned from either productive failure (PF) or vicarious failure (VF). PF students "generated" solutions to a complex problem targeting the concept of variance that they had not learned yet before receiving instruction on the targeted concept. VF students…

We present a method for assessing science inquiry performance, specifically for the inquiry skill of designing and conducting experiments, using educational data mining on students' log data from online microworlds in the Inq-ITS system (Inquiry Intelligent Tutoring System; www.inq-its.org). In our approach, we use a 2-step process: First we…

We use a concept of framing to explain 3 cases in which participants initially lacked mutual understanding but then achieved significant mutual understanding. The cases were all consistent with a pattern of "positional framing" that includes a human participant who is inquiring, which we call a "listener", and a "source", which may be another…

Eighth grade students in Australia (N = 60) participated in an experiment on learning how to solve percentage change problems in a regular classroom in three conditions: unitary, pictorial, and equation approaches. The procedure involved a pre-test, an acquisition phase, and a post-test. The main goal was to test the relative merits of the three…

We describe how 1 Algebra I teacher and her 8th-grade students used meta-representational knowledge when generating and evaluating equations to solve word problems. Analyzing data from a sequence of 4 lessons, we found that the teacher and her students used criteria for evaluating equations, in addition to other types of knowledge (e.g., different…

This study compared the efficacy of 3 approaches to professional development in middle school Earth science organized around the principles of Understanding by Design (Wiggins & McTighe, 1998) in a sample of 53 teachers from a large urban district. Teachers were randomly assigned to a control group or to 1 of 3 conditions that varied with respect…

This article presents an analysis of how students' dispositions toward learning shift and change over time through their engagement with particular classroom practices and identifies classroom practices that support the development of more productive dispositions. An analysis of 4 purposefully selected students from 2 different classrooms reveals…

Three experiments with students from 7th and 8th grade were performed to investigate the effects of decorative pictures in learning as compared to instructional pictures. Pictures were considered as instructional, when they were primarily informative, and as decorative, when they were primarily aesthetically appealing. The experiments…

The study examined the effects of two different instructional interventions as support for scientific discovery learning using computer simulations. In two well-known categories of difficulty, data interpretation and self-regulation, instructional interventions for learning with computer simulations on the topic "ecosystem water" were developed…

This study examines the contribution of learner cognitive and motivational characteristics to achievement in science at three grade levels. Specifically, the relations between domain-specific epistemic beliefs about the development and justification of scientific knowledge, achievement goals, knowledge, self-concept, self-efficacy, and achievement…

This article examines a classroom discussion of multiple interpretations of the scales on two distance versus time graphs. The analysis describes how two students and a teacher used multiple meanings for phrases of the form "I went by" and coordinated these meanings with different views of the scales. Students' ambiguous and shifting meanings did…

This article examines how conversations during design reviews in which 8th-grade mathematics students shared population models with visiting specialists expanded the disciplinary expertise of the classroom. "Re-contextualizing" is a conversational exchange that visiting specialists initiated to invite groups to consider their models in novel…

Over the last decade, researchers have become increasingly interested in students' beliefs about the nature of knowledge and how these beliefs develop. Although initial psychological accounts portrayed epistemic development as a domain-independent process of cognitive maturation, recent studies have found trajectories of epistemic development to…

This article presents a cohesive, empirically grounded categorization system differentiating the types of generalizations students constructed when reasoning mathematically. The generalization taxonomy developed out of an empirical study conducted during a 3-week teaching experiment and a series of individual interviews. Qualitative analysis of…

Two studies examined the effects of four types of teachers' evaluative feedback on Chinese students' self-efficacy in English vocabulary acquisition. In Study 1, a random sample of Grade 8 students (N = 79) learned prefixes and received either formative or summative feedback after failure in test. The results showed that students who received…