Background: The use of analogies as reasoning tools that play a key role in human cognition at all ages has been of interest to educators, scientists, and philosophers ever since Aristotle. Indeed, research has consistently found that analogies provided by teachers can, and do, play an important role in facilitating student understanding of…

Previous literature has explored unconscious racial biases in clinical education and medicine, finding that people with darker skin tones can be underrepresented in learning resources and managed differently in a clinical setting. This study aimed to examine whether patient skin colour can affect the diagnostic ability and confidence of medical…

This qualitative descriptive study aimed to explore how community college students describe their motivations and reasoning when learning about controversial science topics at a southwestern community college. Anti-science attitudes have been increasing globally, but is not fully understood. Two research questions were developed using the theory…

The education system evolves and transforms towards interactive and immersive learning tools in this digital age. Augmented reality has also evolved as a ubiquitous, robust, and effective technology for providing innovative educational tools. In engineering education, many abstract concepts require technological intervention for conceptual…

Reasoning about numerical magnitudes is a key aspect of mathematics learning. Most research examining the relation of magnitude understanding to general mathematics achievement has focused on whole number and fraction magnitudes. The present longitudinal study (N = 435) used a 3-step latent class analysis to examine reasoning about magnitudes on a…

Reasoning about numerical magnitudes is a key aspect of mathematics learning. Most research examining the relation of magnitude understanding to general mathematics achievement has focused on whole number and fraction magnitudes. The present longitudinal study (N=435) used a 3-step latent class analysis to examine reasoning about magnitudes on a…

Being able to estimate quantity is important in everyday life and for success in the STEM disciplines. However, people have difficulty reasoning about magnitudes outside of human perception (e.g., nanoseconds, geologic time). This study examines patterns of estimation errors across temporal and spatial magnitudes at large scales. We evaluated the…

Understanding how students learn is crucial for helping them succeed. We examined brain function in 107 undergraduate students during a task known to be challenging for many students--physics problem solving--to characterize the underlying neural mechanisms and determine how these support comprehension and proficiency. Further, we applied module…

There have been mixed results in studies investigating proportional reasoning in young children. The current study aimed to examine whether providing visual scaling cues and structuring the reasoning process can improve proportional reasoning in 5- to 6-year-old children. In a series of computerized tasks, children compared the sweetness of 2…

This study explores first-year university students' reasoning as they learn to draw Lewis structures. We also present a theoretical account of the formal procedure commonly taught for drawing these structures. Students' discussions during problem-solving activities were video recorded and detailed analyses of the discussions were made through the…

Students' explanations of their mathematical thinking and conclusions have become a greater part of the assessment landscape in recent years. With a sample of 71 fourth-grade students at risk for mathematics learning disabilities, we investigated the relation between student accuracy in comparing the magnitude of fractions and the quality of…

Reasoning, our ability to solve novel problems, has been shown to improve as a result of learning experiences. However, the underlying mechanisms of change in this high-level cognitive ability are unclear. We hypothesized that possible mechanisms include improvements in the encoding, maintenance, and/or integration of relations among mental…

Mathematical reasoning is one of the four proficiencies in the Australian Curriculum: Mathematics (AC:M) where it is described as: "[the] capacity for logical thought and actions, such as analysing, proving, evaluating, explaining, inferring, justifying and generalising" (Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority [ACARA],…

Background: Research has identified the core skills that predict success during primary school in reading and arithmetic, and this knowledge increasingly informs teaching. However, there has been no comparable work that pinpoints the core skills that underlie success in science. Aims and method: The present paper attempts to redress this by…

Student explanations of their mathematical thinking and conclusions have become a greater part of the assessment landscape in recent years. With a sample of 71 4th-grade students at-risk for mathematics learning disabilities, we investigated the relation between student accuracy in comparing the magnitude of fractions and the quality of students'…