Search Results (15)

Solving algebraic word problems is an essential component of the school mathematics curriculum; nonetheless, many students still make mistakes in solving them. Several studies have largely focused on categorizing errors in solving algebraic word problems. However, relatively little attention has been given to the underlying learning obstacles that shape these errors. Addressing this gap, this study explores students’ learning obstacles in solving algebraic word problems through a hermeneutic phenomenological approach. Data were collected from 138 Indonesian students and two Indonesian mathematics teachers using written tests, document studies, and interviews. Data analysis was conducted alongside thematic analysis and the interpretative phenomenological analysis framework. The findings revealed five main errors: misunderstanding the problem’s meaning, incorrectly forming mathematical equations from the narrative, failing to solve the constructed mathematical model, providing incomplete or contextually inappropriate final answers, and failing to apply the trial-and-error method. These errors were traced to three categories of learning obstacles. Ontogenic obstacles included weaknesses in prerequisite skills such as reading comprehension, arithmetic, and algebraic manipulation, as well as a limited ability to transition from arithmetic to algebraic thinking. Epistemological obstacles arose when students’ understanding was tied to narrow contexts and could not be applied flexibly to new problem situations. Didactical obstacles reflected instructional gaps, particularly the emphasis on procedural routines over interpretation, reflection, and representational flexibility. This study extends the application of learning obstacle theory to the context of algebraic word problems and offers practical implications for teachers in designing adaptive instructional strategies to minimize students’ learning obstacles. Full article

This document explores the concept of Learning Styles (LSs) and their implications for Adaptive Learning Systems (ALSs). It begins by defining LSs as distinct patterns of behavior and thought that influence how individuals process information, drawing on widely recognized theories in the field of LSs. The text highlights the importance of recognizing diverse learning preferences to enhance knowledge construction. It discusses the role of ALSs in personalizing educational experiences by adapting content delivery and recommendation to align with an individual LS. The document also addresses significant challenges in the application of LSs, including a lack of consensus on their validity, insufficient pedagogical perspectives, and potential overemphasis that may limit student exposure to varied learning experiences. The core of the text lies in the pedagogical characterization of Felder–Silverman Learning Styles Model (FSLSM), which has been widely used in ALSs, so that future designers could have a didactic basis to relate digital resources to profiles. Ultimately, the text advocates for a balanced approach that considers LSs while also recognizing the multifaceted nature of learning, emphasizing the need for ongoing research to implement these concepts in educational settings. Full article

Given the growing relevance of issues of educational inclusion at an international level, educational curricula have pointed out the need to address the diversity of students in the classroom. In this article, a theoretical reflection is proposed around the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) guideline—as inclusive principles for generic teaching and learning processes—and Didactic Suitability Criteria (DSC) guideline—as specific principles for mathematical teaching and learning processes—to establish relationships and seek complementarities between both references. To this end, firstly, a document analysis of literature about UDL was conducted; secondly, UDL and DSC guidelines were contrasted, relating UDL principles and verification points to DSC components and indicators to design a first proposal of an integrated guideline between both references; and, thirdly, an expert validation was conducted with researchers familiar with DSC to adjust the guideline originally proposed. As a main result, a proposal of integration of the UDL and DSC guidelines was designed, which intends to organise the reflection of (prospective and practising) mathematics teachers on their teaching practice. This integrated proposal not only seeks to address current curricular needs, but also to delve deeper into theoretical development that contributes to refining existing tools to encourage reflection on teaching practice. Full article

The prevalence of end-stage renal disease has surged significantly in recent decades, with an 88% increase reported in the United States between 2002 and 2022. Peritoneal dialysis and home hemodialysis offer numerous advantages over in-center hemodialysis, including improved quality of life, increased treatment flexibility, and reduced healthcare costs. Despite strong preferences among healthcare professionals and the documented benefits of home-based therapies, utilization remains limited in the U.S. One of the many factors that play a role in the underutilization of home therapies is inadequate training and perceived incompetence among nephrology fellows in initiating and managing home dialysis patients. Here in this article, we highlight the current educational gaps in home dialysis training and ways to overcome the barriers. There is a need for a multifaceted approach that includes home dialysis rotations and continuity clinics; a dedicated one-year Home Dialysis Fellowship; and continued medical education through didactics, symposiums, and conferences. Here we emphasize the need for structured, longitudinal programs that combine didactic learning with hands-on clinical in fellowship trainings and the importance of dedicated one-year fellowships in cultivating future leaders and experts in the field. By enhancing training pathways and expanding fellowship opportunities, nephrology education can better equip physicians to meet the growing demand for home dialysis, ultimately improving patient outcomes and advancing public health objectives. Full article

Teaching social research methodology in university courses, whether qualitative or quantitative, presents significant challenges for both instructors and students. These challenges include the availability of empirical datasets, the illustration of data analysis techniques, the simulation of research report writing, and the facilitation of scenario-based learning. Emerging AI tools, such as ChatGPT-4, offer potential support in higher education, though their effectiveness depends on the context and their integration with traditional didactic methods. This article explores the potential of AI in teaching social research methodology, with a focus on its benefits, limits and ethical considerations. Furthermore, the paper presents a case study of AI application in teaching qualitative research techniques, specifically in the analysis of solicited documents. Generative AI shows the potential to improve the teaching of social research methodology by providing students with opportunities to engage in hands-on learning, interact with realistic datasets and refine their analytical and communication skills. The integration of AI in education should, however, be approached with a critical mindset, ensuring that AI tools serve as a means to sharpen (not replace) traditional methods of learning. Full article

The objective of this study was to document an experience of training community environmental leaders in the context of sustainable development in localities surrounding the Chautengo Lagoon, Guerrero, Mexico. Specifically, we explored the epistemological, theoretical, deontological, and pedagogical–didactic components that must be considered when designing a training process for community environmental leaders in rural contexts. A mixed, descriptive, transversal approach was used to articulate scientific knowledge with local knowledge. Twelve semi-structured interviews identified potential environmental leaders, while nineteen surveys assessed training needs. Subsequently, a tailored capacity-building program was designed, implemented, and evaluated, which assessed empirical knowledge of communities and sustainable practices. A total of 19 leaders with organizational and mobilization skills were trained, successfully engaging 1500 people in an environmental cleanup campaign. The program covered key topics such as sustainable development management, environmental education for sustainability, and local governance, resulting in the formation of an environmental advocacy committee. Participants rated the program positively for its design (90%), content, materials, facilitator performance (71%), and duration (67%). This study contributes to the understanding of community environmental leadership in Latin America highlighting the value of local knowledge as a tool for environmental governance and sustainable social change. Our findings suggest that strengthening community leadership with participatory methodologies can improve environmental awareness, community resilience, and long-term ecological conservation. The program can be replicated in vulnerable communities in other contexts and positively impact local governance. Full article

In exploratory teaching, the pupils learn from their work on tasks that aim to introduce new concepts, procedures, representations and mathematical ideas. Lesson study, with its focus on teachers’ collaborative and reflective work around issues of pupil learning, is a powerful formative process that may be used in preservice teacher education, sustaining an exploratory teaching approach. In this article, we present a lesson study experience in preservice teacher education, addressing the case of a preservice teacher who is preparing to teach in grades 1–6. Our aim is to identify what key aspects of knowledge of teaching practice does the preservice teacher use when preparing and leading an exploratory lesson during her participation in a lesson study. Our methodology is qualitative, with data collected from the lesson study sessions and the collection of documents produced during the lesson study work, and the data are analysed using a model that presents the key aspects of knowledge of teaching practice. The results show that the structure and the activities carried out in the lesson study, such as designing the lesson, selecting the task and anticipating questions to be posed to pupils, promoted the use of the preservice teacher’s didactic knowledge regarding the phases of an exploratory lesson. Full article

This study aimed to examine the collaborative design of an interdisciplinary STEAM activity conducted by lower-secondary school teachers of different disciplines. We adopted an approach based on a case study involving four teachers (art, music, technology, and mathematics/science teachers) designing an activity focused on the concept of symmetry. We gathered data through oral, semi-structured interviews with the teachers and through schematic representations of resource systems provided by the teachers themselves. Data analysis aimed to identify the different kinds of resources the teachers relied on, their utilization schemes, and the overarching meta-didactical praxeology adopted by the teachers for their collaborative design work. The theoretical model adopted for data analysis was a combination of the Documentational Approach to Didactics and the Meta-Didactical Transposition frameworks, originally introduced to study the work of researchers in the context of teacher professional development. An application of this model to the collaborative design work of teachers can provide a fresh insight into the relationship between teachers’ documentation work for the design of a STEAM activity, the practices that they adopt to address this shared task (praxis), and the shared justifying discourses (logos) for their praxis. Full article

Digital transformation has become constant and has forced governments to reevaluate the validity of their educational models; therefore, regarding digital and information literacy, to train teachers to improve new digital skills becomes essential. For these reasons, this research will explore the instruction of teachers in digital and information literacy in basic education; likewise, there will be an observation of the research’s theoretical-methodological characteristics related to these variables, and, also, we will carry out an analysis of the most pertinent contributions on the impact of new literacies and competencies in the teaching–learning processes in basic education, with the purpose of obtaining a current state overview of its teacher training within the framework of the technologies’ usage linked to teaching. This review was based on the guidelines of the PRISMA protocol, and to select 56 documents, the Scopus and Web of Science (WoS) databases were used. The results show that, in the Scopus database, Spain is the country with the most research on the subject, with 29% of the total, followed by Indonesia, with 6%, and the United States, with 4%, and that the articles focus mainly on the social sciences and computer science. Likewise, in WoS, the country with the most research on the subject is Spain, with 30%, followed by Russia, with 10%, and Norway, with 8%, and the articles mainly revolve around the categories of education and communication. The research related to this topic uses a quantitative approach in 68%, a qualitative approach in 25% and a mixed approach in 7%. It was shown that there is a direct relationship between digital and information literacy and digital competency. In addition, it is also emphasized that digital and information literacy are continuous and long-term processes. More didactic proposals on digital skills would be necessary, over government policies and efforts, to achieve a community with a high level of digital and information literacy. Full article

COVID-19 forced a change in the usual face-to-face teaching–learning process to remote modalities in a matter of weeks. An abrupt change, within the context of uncertainty surrounding the pandemic, significantly increased the stress experienced by professors, students, and their families. Black screens were also a sign of anxiety in the face of new emergency didactic interaction. It has been documented that emotions influence learning; however, few studies have analyzed learning during a pandemic from a resilience approach. The perceptions of the teaching–learning process of 654 professors and 1540 students from 34 Chilean universities were analyzed. Emotions experienced in remote education during the pandemic were studied in relation to professor empathy, respect in the virtual classroom, student/professor technological resources, didactic strategies, student participation, group work, tutoring, perception of learning, assessment, and perception of demand. The results show a direct relationship between professor and student positive emotions and the quality of perceived pedagogical practice and interaction. Full article

Health and social care professionals (HCPs) who work in nursing homes (NHs) are increasingly required to sustain serious illness conversations about care goals and preferences. Although these conversations may also be challenging for experienced HCPs and the literature recognizes high-quality communication as key to providing patient-centered care, so far, no specific educational program has been developed for the NH setting to improve HCPs’ communication skills. Our study aims to test the feasibility and potential effectiveness of an innovative, blended communication skills training program (Teach-to-Communicate) targeting the HCPs who work in NHs. This program includes classroom-based theory, experiential learning, and e-learning, and relies on interdisciplinary contexts and several didactic methods. The study consists of two phases: phase I is the development of written resources that employ focus group discussion involving field experts and external feedback from key stakeholders. Phase II consists of a multicenter, pilot, pre-post study with nested qualitative study. The Teach-to-Communicate training program is expected to enhance the quality of communication in NH and HCPs’ confidence in sustaining serious illness conversations, reduce family carers’ psycho-emotional burden and improve their satisfaction with the care received, and increase advance care planning documentation. Our protocol will provide insight for future researchers, healthcare providers, and policymakers and pave the way for blended educational approaches in the field of communication skills training. Full article

Recent societal changes have meant that education has had to adapt to digital natives of the 21st century. These changes have required a transformation in the current educational paradigm, where active methodologies and ICT have become vehicles for achieving this goal, designing complete teaching sequences with STEM approaches that help students to learn. Under a gamified approach, this document addresses a didactic proposal in geometry focused on STEM disciplines. This proposal combines tools such as AR, VR, manipulative materials, and social networks, with techniques such as m-learning, cooperative-learning, and flipped-learning, which make methodological transformation possible. The research was carried out during two academic years under an action research framework. It departed from a traditional methodology and, in two cycles, methodology was improved with the benefits that gamification brings to STEM proposals in Secondary Education. The data gathered in the experiment were analysed following a mixed method. Learning produced, strategies employed, successes and errors, and results of a questionnaire are presented. Evidence shows an improvement in academic performance from 50% fails to 100% pass, most of the students ended up motivated, participation was of the whole group, more than 80% showed positive emotions, and thanks to the cooperative-learning, group cohesion was improved. Full article

There is, in France, a long-term tradition of research in the didactics of mathematics. In this paper, we revisit this tradition using, as a specific lens, the research carried out on the educational use of digital tools and resources for teaching and learning mathematics. We first briefly introduce this tradition and the three main theories at the base of it: the theory of didactical situations, the theory of conceptual fields, and the anthropological theory of the didactic. Then, considering three different technological lenses, i.e., dynamic geometry environments, computer algebra systems, and digital resources, we show how these theories and the long-term connection established in this tradition with the fields of cognitive ergonomics and computer sciences have influenced technological research and its outcomes. We also show that, conversely, didactic technological research has led to original and influential theoretical constructions, such as the instrumental approach and the documentational approach to didactics, and that it has contributed in a substantial way to the opening of this didactic tradition to other didactic cultures and other communities, beyond the didactic one. Full article

In what ways can teaching Islam through controversial issues be useful in religious education? Can it serve to counter problems of representation of Islam, and what are the benefits and possible pitfalls of adopting such an approach? In this article, I will explore the use of Muslim internal feminist critique of conservative and patriarchal interpretations of women’s religious leadership in Islam as a controversial issues approach to teaching Islam in non-confessional religious education. The approach can be relevant for students in upper-secondary religious education, but also in teacher education. Building on secondary research documenting the problems of teaching Islam in non-confessional religious education in the Nordic countries as well as research on Muslim feminism spanning over a decade, this article investigates the didactic potentials and challenges that adopting the controversial issues approach may hold for teaching Islam. The main argument of this article is that the internal feminist debate on Islam provides an alternative entry to teaching Islam. It provides didactic resources and tools for understanding the discursive aspects of Islam, i.e., how Islam is conceived, interpreted, debated and practiced by Muslims, which in turn highlight power aspects and authority that are central to the production of religious knowledge. Consequently, the controversial issues approach may serve to counter certain “grand narratives” that seem to permeate current representations of Islam in religious education. Full article

Given the diversity of meanings nowadays, creativity and mathematical creativity are difficult to define. However, it is crucial to do so, whether in society, in education or in mathematics education. Creativity is not valued as an integral part of the classroom context of mathematics or in Teacher practice, possibly due to the constant changes of Portuguese curricular. In this sense, it is necessary to promote the development of creativity as an integral part of the pedagogical practice of each teacher. The teacher’s role is fundamental to allow students opportunities to use the didactical resources, such as the mathematical tasks. In the 21st century, creativity and mathematical creativity have become important in Portuguese curricula through the implementation of the Students Profile in the end of compulsory schooling. This profile appeals to the development of creativity regarding of values, competences and guiding Principles, in order to mobilize schools and society for a better education. It is desirable that a young person, after leaving compulsory schooling, becomes a citizen capable of thinking critically, autonomously and creatively. Thus, in order to look for creative teaching approaches and strategies for the mathematical contents, it was decided to question students on the alluded concepts. This research took place in the academic year 2017/2018, with 14 participants aged between 15 and 21 years old (mean ages M = 17.36 and DP = 1.82) of two classes from one group of Portuguese state schools. The methodology was qualitative and interpretative, using a multiple case study design, one in a 10th grade class and another in a 12th. In data processing related to the analysis of the written documents, content analysis was used, and examples that represent each category were presented. The results achieved indicated, for these participants, that conceptions of creativity and mathematical creativity were not divergent in the two cases. In fact, the participants associated creativity with the category of Create something new and different and mathematical creativity with the category of Innovation. Full article