The ability to solve complex problems successfully represents a key competence for students' educational success and beyond. While strategy application and metastrategic knowledge constitute two underlying components that drive successful complex problem solving (CPS), little is known about how these two facets develop individually and jointly in…

Background: Fitness testing is a commonly applied learning and teaching practice implemented in both secondary and elementary school physical education (PE). Many teachers believe that by using a variety of different tests, they are able to provide students with feedback regarding their fitness status, and furthermore, increase students'…

There is a lack of research on students' conceptions of giftedness and intelligence, despite recognition of their influence on real-life factors such as achievement and motivation. This paper presents a cross-sectional mixed methods study that investigated Finnish students' (age 6-16 years; N = 1282) implicit conceptions of giftedness and…

This article seeks to substantiate the need for the prognostic assessment of the degree to which school students are prepared to master new types of activity, which underlie their design of an individual learning route at an appropriate senior stage of learning. The authors discuss the concept of project competence as an integral characteristic of…

Mathematics is an important school subject but one which often poses problems for learners. It has been found that learners do not possess the cognitive capacity to handle understanding procedures, representations, concepts, and applications at the same time. while the extent of field dependency may hold the key to one way by which the working…

When students read for learning, they frequently are required to integrate text and graphics information into coherent knowledge structures. The following study aimed at analyzing how students deal with texts and how they deal with graphics when they try to integrate the two sources of information. Furthermore, the study investigated differences…

In this study, students' understanding of chemical changes was investigated in relation to four individual differences, related to logical thinking, field dependence/independence, convergence and divergence thinking. The study took place in Greece with the participation of students (n = 374) from three grades (8th, 10th and 12th grades) of…

Decision making about socioscientific issues is an important aspect of modern science education worldwide. Among the many topics that represent socioscientific issues, issues relating to the sustainable development of our environment are one crucial topic. However, difficulties exist with respect to the assessment of teaching outcomes related to…

There is growing consensus that, for trained readers, poetic-text processing involves a genre decision, which triggers genre-based conventional expectations and directs attention to the textual devices. This research examines how students recognize and process texts in poetic versus prose form at different points during their literary education.…

Interest in students who exhibit characteristics with difficulties in learning can be traced as far back as 1800. In order to better understand the complexities and causes of learning disabilities, many researchers (Bannatyne, 1968, 1974; Rugal, 1974) have investigated ways to better identify learners who struggle with academics. A strong argument…

In this commentary, assumptions about the nature and development of children's false memories as described in a recent article by C. J. Brainerd, V. F. Reyna, and S. J. Ceci (2008) are reviewed. Specifically, questions are raised about what drives the development of false memories in fuzzy-trace theory (FTT). Recent studies that challenge a core…

The aim of this research was to explore Australian high-school students' argumentation and informal reasoning about biotechnology. Data were obtained from semi-structured interviews with 10 Year-8 students (12-13 years old), 14 Year-10 students (14-15 years old) and 6 Year-12 students (16-17 years old) from six metropolitan high schools in Perth,…

This study compared affective responses to written and oral presentations of triadic situations of three groups: fourth graders (concrete operational), eighth graders, and freshmen in college (formal operational) to see whether the variation in stimulus mode produces a different kind of response in the eighth graders. (Author/NH)

Psychomotor performance is fundamental to human existence. It is important in many real world activities and nowadays psychomotor tests are used in several fields of industry, army, and medical sciences in employee selection. This article tries to define psychomotor activity by introducing some psychomotor theories. Furthermore the…

Reactions to praise, blame, and reward received by two children were studied among 79 fourth, sixth, and eighth graders. Findings suggest an alternate and less differentiated cognitive mechanism for the paradoxical effects of praise and blame. Older children showed an increasing preference to be like the nonpraised, nonrewarded, or blamed child.…