One of the aspects of programming that novices often struggle with is the understanding of abstract concepts, such as variables, loops, expressions, and especially Boolean operations. This paper aims to explore the effects of programming tools with different degrees of embodiment on learning Boolean operations in elementary school. To this end, 67…

Socioscientific issues (SSI) such as COVID-19 and climate change often highlight the inequalities that structural racism creates. If we ever wish to equitably solve these issues, we require a population that has the scientific literacy and the sociopolitical consciousness to do so. Yet, the push for culturally relevant education has had little…

While AI has become more prevalent in our society than ever, many young learners are found holding various naive, erroneous conceptions of AI due to the influence of their technology and media environments. To address this issue, this study seeks to propose a novel pedagogical solution to improve upper-elementary school students' scientific…

Young children have been taught simple sequences of alternating shapes and colors, referred to as "patterning", for the past half century in the hope that their understanding of pre-algebra and their mathematics achievement would be improved. The evidence that such patterning instruction actually improves children's academic achievement…

Professional development is an important part of creating a culture of continuous school improvement to maximize student learning. Rarely do we measure the impact of professional development on teacher learning, implementation and student outcomes. This study describes a professional development strategy for elementary teachers to promote…

The article describes a theory-driven approach to meaningful learning in primary schools, based on the Vygotskian cultural-historical theory of human development and learning. This approach is elaborated into an educational concept called "developmental education" that is implemented in the Netherlands in many primary schools. In this…

A model for processes of abstraction, based on epistemic actions, has been proposed elsewhere. Here we apply this model to processes in which groups of individual students construct shared knowledge and consolidate it. The data emphasizes the interactive flow of knowledge from one student to the others in the group, until they reach a shared…

The study was designed to test the hierarchy of difficulty in the acquisition of principles of class and conditional logic for 120 children of normal intelligence, and to compare the relative rates of logic development for those children of normal intelligence with the rate of logic development found in a previous study involving 120 gifted…

The potency of Pascual-Leone's M construct was demonstrated by experimental production of decalages on combinatorial reasoning tasks. Logical and perceptual task characteristics remained constant while the number of variables was varied so that processing demands, relative to processing capacities, were the same for subjects at each of three age…

According to Matthew Lipman, director of the Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children, philosophy is the best answer to the call for critical thinking because it provides experience in reasoning that will prepare children much better than the limited knowledge of the disciplines. (TE)

One hundred and sixty gifted children (4-11 years old) participated in a study confirming a hierarchy of difficulties for logic activities and the existence of a developmental trend in logic learning. (CL)

Discusses how elementary school children perceive abstract art and describes activities used to increase their appreciation of abstract art. Students draw dinosaurs and discuss the variations in their drawings. Two movement activities which reinforce concepts about abstraction are described. (AM)

Attempted to determine whether children from grades two and six generate inferences while they read or only later in response to tasks which require inferences. (Author/DB)

Preschool and kindergarten children were shown carnival-game sequences which pictured an actor's outcome at four game trials. At one session, children summarized the game outcome after every sequence; at another session, subjects judged the actor's ability after viewing the trials. Results suggest that accurate summary information is a necessary…