Given the important role played by students' spatial reasoning skills, in this paper we analyse how students use these skills to solve problems involving 2D representations of 3D geometrical shapes. Using data from in total 1357 grades 4 to 9 students, we examine how they visualise shapes in the given diagrams and make use of properties of shapes…

In this article, Rebecca Seah and Andrew Beencke explore the importance of developing critical thinking and spatial reasoning skills. They explore a series of activities designed to develop the visualisation and critical thinking skills with Year 4 students.

This study aims to explore an educational learning environment that supports students to learn conceptual modelling with the unified modelling language (UML). In this study, we call the describing models "UML programming." In this paper, we show an educational UML programming environment for science, technology, engineering, art, and…

In this work we examined the content of approximately 950 mathematics questions used in measuring achievement among 4th, 5th and 6th graders in the US in an attempt to determine how the current standardized examinations, which were developed to reflect new national curricular mandates, compared to the old measures used for the same purpose. Using…

Initial teacher education (ITE) serves as a bridge between prospective teachers exiting the school system to enrol in teacher education faculties, on the one hand and newly qualified teachers (NQTs) who are embarking on a career in schooling on the other. The present paper describes the language and thinking skills student teachers bring to their…

The Afterschool Alliance, in partnership with Dollar General Literacy Foundation, is proud to present this issue brief examining the vital role afterschool programs play to build students' literacy skills. This issue brief will explore the additional support needed to help students with their reading, writing and critical thinking skills, as well…

The use of high-stakes assessment to measure students' mathematical performance has become commonplace in schools all over the world. Such assessment instruments provide national or international comparisons of student (and potentially teacher performance). Each form of assessment is specialised in nature and is characteristic of the culture and…

In this chapter, we describe several intelligent tutoring systems (ITSs) designed to support student literacy through reading comprehension and writing instruction and practice. Although adaptive instruction can be a powerful tool in the literacy domain, developing these technologies poses significant challenges. For example, evaluating the…

There is little discussion in the Design-Based Research (DBR) literature on how to design an intervention that has the potential to be highly effective. The act of designing is usually viewed as engineering something from theory or research on best practices. This paper challenges that universal belief and presents successful design as an…

Technology has been shown to positively influence student learning when students explore technology-rich tasks that simultaneously require them to use higher-order thinking skills (HOTS), such as analyzing or evaluating information or creating new representations of knowledge. Educational technology researchers have posited that in order for…

Mixed-aged (MA) classes are a common phenomenon around the world. In Sweden, these types of classes increased rapidly during the 1980s and 1990s, despite the fact that existing empirical support for MA classes is weak. In this paper, the effect of attending an MA class during grades 4-6 on students' cognitive skills is estimated. Using a unique…

This article introduces the Measurement Skills Assessment (MeSA), which was designed to evaluate the mastery of measurement in elementary school students. The primary objectives for the MeSA include covering a broad range of measurement concepts, distinguishing between major subtypes of measurement, and constructing a continuum of items varying in…

Millions of middle and high school students lack the literacy skills--including reading, writing, and critical thinking--that they need to succeed in college and the workplace. According to "The Nation's Report Card" fewer than one third of eighth graders read at a proficient level. Policymakers have directed considerable resources toward…

In this article, the authors analyze the alignment between a released fourth-grade task from the 1996 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and benchmarks and standards, and discuss whether the task elicits student thinking that matches the quality of the learning goals.

Used a three-phase teaching procedure based on the development of metacognition to extend emphasis on inductive reasoning in primary education to Grades 3 and 4. Found that teachers could apply the programs as intended, but needed support to shift attention from reasoning product to reasoning process. Program learning effects indicated that better…