Capacities for abstract thinking and problem-solving are central to human cognition. Processes of abstraction allow the transfer of experiences and knowledge between contexts helping us make informed decisions in new or changing contexts. While we are often inclined to relate such reasoning capacities to individual minds and brains, they may in…

Cosmology presents students with ideas that stimulate their curiosity and brings together various concepts from STEM that call on a variety of reasoning types across multiple representational modes, involving subtleties of spacetime relations, a variety of models and evidence requiring multiple lines of high precision observations. This study…

This paper focuses on the analysis of Bebras Challenge tasks to find Informatics tasks that develop abstract thinking. Our study seeks to find which Bebras tasks develop abstraction and in what way. We analysed hundreds of tasks from the Czech contest to identify those tasks requiring participants to abstract directly or use abstract structures.…

This study aims to develop a computer program for the identification key to insect orders (Arthropoda: Hexapoda) and to investigate its effectiveness as teaching material. Secondly, this study is aiming at whether this program improves students' computational thinking skills or not longitudinal quasi-experimental design. Firstly, the study is…

A theoretical model describing young students' (Grades 1-3) functional-thinking modes was formulated and validated empirically (n = 345), hypothesizing that young students' functional-thinking modes consist of recursive patterning, covariational thinking, correspondence-particular, and correspondence-general factors. Data analysis suggested that…

This research was aimed at profiling student's thinking skills in dealing with Higher-Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) questions based on Marzano taxonomy by referring to 13 indicators. This pre-experimental research employed pretest-posttest design. The indicators included were comparison, classification, deductive reasoning, inductive reasoning,…

This study characterizes how a cohort of 33 middle and secondary mathematics preservice teachers' inferential reasoning changed while enrolled in a statistics course designed for future teachers. Changes in inferential reasoning from pre- to post-assessments are analyzed and further elucidated by midcourse clinical interviews conducted with a…

We applied a mixed-method research design to investigate the patterns of reasoning used by novice undergraduate chemistry students to classify chemical substances as elements, compounds, or mixtures based on their particulate representations. We were interested in the identification of the representational features that students use to build a…

In this paper we report on a research aimed to identify and characterize secondary school students' reasoning and proof abilities when working with 3-dimensional geometric solids. We analyze students' answers to two problems asking them to prove certain properties of prisms. As results of this analysis, we get, on the one side, a characterization…

Surface and relational similarity were examined in two experiments involving isomorphic and nonisomorphic analogical transfer, using direct-mapping and cross-mapping conditions. In the first experiment, third and sixth graders exhibited mapping based on relational similarity more frequently than did kindergartners; in the second, most four- to…

Two experiments examined the development of recall organization by observing use of categorical and spatial clustering strategies and how encoding experiences and recall task influence degree of organization. Children and adults recalled furniture from their home. Older subjects organized items spatially; when recalling objects and their…

The purpose of this paper is to review literature on analogical reasoning, to work out the implications of Polya's model of analogical problem solving, and to propose an alternative model of instructional design based on the use of analogical reasoning. Justification of the model is based on research on the nature of analogical thought and an…

An ethnographic study was conducted with the goal of evaluating the botanical concepts of sixth-grade students. One aspect of the study involved examination of the levels of abstraction students use for naming plants. Nine sixth-grade students were interviewed individually. Each was asked to identify the plants seen in a set of 64 slides and…

This study examined the effect of an innovative teaching activity to improve concrete operational thinking skills with preschoolers in Head Start programs. A "learning set" of classification games and seriation games was used to teach the oddity principle and insertion into a series. These games were played with the children using toy ponies and…

Examines operations of generalization, identification, discrimination, and synthesis in mathematical concept development from early childhood to late adolescence according to Vygotsky's theory of development. (MDH)