I denna kunskapsöversikt behandlas forskningsfrågan hur det kooperativa lärandet kan påverka elevers resonemangsförmåga inom ämnet matematik. Studiens underlag bygger på vetenskapliga artiklar samt Grundbok i kooperativt lärande skriven av Fohlin, Moerkerken, Westman & Wilson, 2017. Syftet med arbetet är att redogöra för hur forskningen framställer metoden kooperativt lärande med fokus på elevers resonemangsförmåga inom matematiken. Arbetet är uppbyggt utifrån en inledande del om vad kooperativt arbete innebär. Ett metodavsnitt presenteras sedan där tillvägagångssättet av sökprocessen beskrivs och en sammanställning av vetenskapliga artiklar visas i en tabell. Informationen från de vetenskapliga artiklarna analyseras utifrån forskningsfrågan som sedan redogörs i en resultatdel som bygger på fyra huvudkategorier utifrån ämnets relevans. Därefter diskuteras resultatet av litteraturundersökningen som påvisar att de resonemang som eftersträvas inom kooperativt lärande kan i vissa avseende påminna om det som Lithner (2008) benämner som kreativa resonemang. De kreativa resonemangen bidrar med positiva effekter för elevers matematikinlärning. Dock krävs det en tydlig struktur där lärarens kompetens och engagemang anses som viktiga faktorer. Arbetet avslutas med förslag på fortsatt forskning.

Syftet med denna kunskapsöversikt är att skapa en överblick över aktuell forskning angående metoden kooperativt lärande med fokus på elevernas resonemangsförmåga inom ämnet matematik. Kooperativt lärande är ett arbetssätt att strukturera samarbete mellan eleverna när de lär sig. För att jag ska kunna svara på undersökningsfrågan harjag genomfört systematiska undersökningar i olika databaser, exempelvis Ebsco, Swepub och även sekundära sökningar. Texten är uppbyggt med en inledningsdel som redogör vad kooperativt lärandet och resonemangsförmåga innebär. Sedan har jag sammanställt de funna artiklarna i en tabell och vidare har artiklarna studerats och analyserats. Resultatet visar hur kooperativt lärande kan påverka elevernas resonemangsförmåga positivt, dock krävs det en välstrukturerad undervisning där lärarens kompetens och engagemang är en viktig faktor. Avslutningsvis diskuteras resultaten utifrån framtida yrkesverksamhet och förslag på fortsatt forskning.

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This study was performed to determine what content in biology was perceived as difficult and important to learn and to investigate whether there is a relationship between reasoning ability, gender, perceived difficulty and importance. A total of 397 Grade 11 students and sixteen biology teachers participated in the study. Students and teachers&rsquo / perceptions of difficult and important to learn concepts were determined through a questionnaire. Moreover, semi-structured interviews were conducted with students and teachers to determine the intrinsic difficulties and sources of difficulties. Descriptive statistics was used to determine frequencies of difficult, moderate and easy biology concepts as perceived by students and teachers. Biotechnology and genetic engineering, hormones, photosynthesis, genes, Mendelian genetics and respiration were found to be difficult concepts for students to learn. On the other hand, the students identified producers, consumers, and decomposers, active transport, diffusion and osmosis as easy topics. In addition, cell, enzyme, cell division, respiratory system in vertebrates, protein synthesis, and reproduction in animals are selected as important topics in the curriculum to be learned. On the contrary, body systems in invertebrates and animal tissues are found to be less important topics to be learned. Students&rsquo / reasoning ability was assessed by using Group test of Logical Thinking (GALT). While a statistically significant negative correlation was found between reasoning ability and percieved difficulty (r= -.115, p&lt / . 05), no statisticaly significant relationship between gender and perceived difficulty was found.

This study investigated the 9th grade students&#039 / achievement regarding diffusion and osmosis in relation to reasoning ability, prior knowledge and gender. A total of 397 ninth grade students participated in the study. The Test of logical thinking (TOLT) and the Diffusion and Osmosis Diagnostic Test (DODT) were administered to determine students&#039 / reasoning ability and achievement in diffusion and osmosis, respectively. DODT results showed that the range of correct answers for the first tier was 41 % to 91%. When both tiers were combined, the correct responses were reduced to a range of 21% to 61%. This result reveals that students have enough content knowledge but they don&rsquo / t know the underlying reason of their choice in diffusion and osmosis concepts. Pearson Product Moment correlations showed a statistically significant positive correlation between achievement and students&#039 / prior knowledge &amp / reasoning ability. MRC Analysis was conducted to determine the contribution of prior knowledge, reasoning ability and gender to the achievement. Prior knowledge and reasoning ability, but not gender, made a statistically significant contribution to the variation on achievement. Prior knowledge and reasoning ability together predicted 37 % of the variation on achievement. Stepwise multiple regression analysis was computed to determine the variables were best predicting students&rsquo / achievement. While prior knowledge explains 33 % of the variation in achievement, reasoning ability explains only 4 % of the variation in achievement. Results indicate that prior knowledge is a better predictor than reasoning ability in students&rsquo / achievement.

abstract: Retrieving an item from memory can cause subsequent suppression of related items. This phenomenon, involving a procedure where participants retrieve category-exemplar pairs (e.g. FRUIT-orange), is known as Retrieval Induced Forgetting (RIF). Individuals who demonstrate greater amounts of RIF also exhibit greater working memory capacity (WMC). Reasoning ability is highly related to WMC, which may suggest that a similar relation exists between RIF and Reasoning ability. The goal of the present investigation was to examine this possibility. Rotation Span and a Letter Number task were used as indicators of WMC and a Cognitive Reflection Test was used to measure Reasoning ability. A significant RIF effect was found, but it did not significantly correlate with WMC or Reasoning ability. These results demonstrate the importance of designing a RIF task appropriately, selecting measures of Reasoning ability, and the theoretical accounts of the RIF effect. One possibility is that by not controlling for output interference, the obtained RIF effect cannot be reasoned to come from the executive control process as suggested by the inhibition account. Although this account is the chief explanation of the RIF effect, it has been challenged by alternative accounts and it remains unclear how the underlying mechanism of RIF is related to higher cognitive abilities. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Psychology 2016

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of gender and reasoning ability on the 8th grade students&rsquo / understanding of ecological concepts and attitude toward science. All 8th grade students from public elementary school in Tosya participated in the study. Students&rsquo / understanding, attitude toward science and reasoning ability were also measured by means of the Test of Ecology Concept (TEC), the Attitude Scale toward Science (ASTS) and the Test of Logical Thinking (TOLT) respectively. In order to investigate students&rsquo / understanding deeply, interview was conducted. Results of the TEC and interview show that students have many misconceptions concerning ecosystem, population, community, decomposers, food chain, food web, energy pyramid and energy flow. Students&rsquo / understanding for the first tier (M= 55.8), combination of first two tiers (M= 27) and combination of all three tiers (M= 21.2) were calculated according to TEC results. Multivariate Analysis of Covariance (MANCOVA) conducted to determine the effect of gender on students&rsquo / understanding of ecological concepts and attitude towards science when reasoning ability was controlled. The results indicated that there was significant gender difference in favor of girls with respect to students&rsquo / understanding of ecological concepts and attitude towards science when reasoning ability was controlled (Wilks&rsquo / Lambda=0.97 / p=.00).

In this study, the contributions of learning motivation, reasoning ability, learning orientation and gender to International Baccalaureate and National Program students&rsquo / mitosis and meiosis achievement was investigated. Participants of the study were 472 ninth grade students from a private high school in Ankara. Two hundred nineteen students (46%) were in International Baccalaureate Program and two hundred fifty three (54%) were in National Program. The study was conducted during the 2006-2007 Spring semester. Prior to the introduction of mitosis and meiosis topics, students&rsquo / motivations toward biology learning (self efficacy, active learning strategies, science learning value, performance goals, achievement goals, learning environment stimulation), formal reasoning abilities and learning approaches were measured by Students&rsquo / Motivation Towards Biology Learning Questionnaire, Test of Logical Thinking Ability scale and Learning Approach Questionnaire respectively. After the topics have been covered, a 20 item Mitosis and Meiosis Achievement Test was used to measure achievement in mitosis and meiosis topics. Multiple regression analysis revealed that achievement was explained in positive direction by formal reasoning ability and in negative direction by active learning strategies and rote learning in National Program classes. Self-efficacy and formal reasoning ability had significant contributions to achievement for International Baccalaureate students. The main predictor of achievement was formal reasoning ability for both International Baccalaureate and National Program students, explaining 4.7% and 10.9% variance respectively. Moreover, while 2.9% of the variance in achievement was explained by self efficacy in International Baccalaureate classes, rote learning explained 2.2% of the variance in achievement in negative direction in National Program classes.

The aim of this thesis is to examine the relative importance of working memory, counting ability, and additive reasoning in children's mathematics learning. One hundred and fifteen 6-year-old Chinese children in Hong Kong participated in two waves of assessments. At the first time point (T1 - first grade), they were assessed using non-verbal intelligence, working memory (central executive, phonological loop, and visuospatial sketchpad), counting ability (procedural counting and conceptual knowledge of counting), additive reasoning (knowledge of the commutativity and complement principles), and mathematical achievement (calculation and story problem solving). Approximately 10 months later (T2 - second grade), children's mathematical achievement in calculation and story problem solving were evaluated once again. The extent to which various cognitive factors longitudinally predicted children's mathematical achievement was evaluated in this study. Several key findings were identified through two sets of analyses - multiple regression models and latent profile analysis. The multiple regression analyses showed that counting ability accounted for a significant amount of variance in T1 and T2 calculation beyond the effects of age, IQ, and working memory, in which conceptual knowledge of counting, but not procedural counting, was a unique predictor. However, counting ability did not contribute significantly to story problem solving at both time points. When additive reasoning was also included in the regression model, counting ability made a unique contribution to T1 calculation only, but not T2 calculation. By contrast, additive reasoning and working memory appeared to be more stable and stronger predictors of children's performance in calculation and story problem solving at both time points than counting ability. Additive reasoning explained a substantial and significant amount of variance in calculation and story problem solving at both time points after the effects of age, IQ, working memory, and counting ability were controlled for - Both knowledge of the commutativity and complement principles were unique predictors. Similarly, working memory also accounted for a significant amount of variance in calculation and story problem solving at both time points beyond the influence of age, IQ, counting ability, and additive reasoning. Among the three components of working memory, only the central executive was a unique predictor for all measures of mathematical achievement. Autoregressive analyses provided strong evidence for the longitudinal predictive powers of additive reasoning and working memory. The analyses showed that both additive reasoning and working memory remained significant predictors of T2 mathematical achievement (calculation and story problem solving) even after the effects of children's previous performance were taken into account (i.e. T1 mathematical achievement). Overall, additive reasoning accounted for the greatest amount of variance in mathematical achievement both concurrently and longitudinally among all the other factors. This finding underscores the importance of additive reasoning in the teaching and learning of mathematics in young children. Because additive reasoning (as indicated by the knowledge of the commutativity and complement principles) is a critical variable in this thesis and relatively scarce research has examined this construct, particular concern was paid to the measurement of additive reasoning. It was measured in two ways in the present study: with the support of concrete materials (the concrete condition) and without the support of concrete materials (the abstract condition). Latent profile analysis showed that all children who performed well in the abstract conditions also did well in the concrete conditions, whereas it did not reveal a group of children who performed well in the abstract conitions, but not in the concrete conditions as well. Another interesting finding was that all children who obtained high scores on tasks that assessed their knowledge of the complement principle also obtained high scores in tasks that assessed their understanding of the commutativity principle. The overall pattern of profiles provides initial evidence suggesting that additive reasoning may develop from thinking in the context of specific quantities to thinking about more abstract symbols, and children acquire the knowledge of the commutativity principle in abstract tasks before they start to acquire the knowledge of the complement principle. This finding demonstrated that patterns of individual differences are present in the development of different aspects of additive reasoning. If teachers possess some knowledge about the particular strengths and weaknesses of each child, it would be easier for them to devise teaching strategies that are tailored to the needs of different children, which may relate to the developmental order of the commutativity and complement principles, and the role of concrete materials in this development. Thus, this study contributes to the literature by showing that assessing additive reasoning in different ways and identifying profiles with classification analyses may be useful for educators to understand more about the developmental stage where each child is placed. It appears that a more fine-grained assessment of additive reasoning can be achieved by incorporating both concrete materials and relatively abstract symbols in the assessment.

Thesis (MEd (Curriculum Studies)--Stellenbosch University, 2010. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The aim of this research is three-fold. Firstly I aimed to show the difficulty of the concept of proportional reasoning through empirical research. Several researchers have shown the degree of difficulty learners experience with proportional reasoning and have even indicated that many university students (and adults) do not have sound proportional reasoning skills. Piaget’s controversial developmental levels classify proportional reasoning as a higher order thinking skill in his highest level of development, formal operational thought, and claims that most people do not reach this level. The difficulty of proportional reasoning and the fact that it is a skill needed within all Learning Outcomes of Mathematical Literacy creates a predicament in terms of the difficulty of the subject in general. Is it then fair to classify Mathematical Literacy as an inferior subject in the way it has been done over the last few years if it is a subject that requires learners to operate at such a high level of thought through proportional reasoning? Secondly, I would like to confirm with the use of a baseline assessment that learners entering Grade 10 Mathematical Literacy have poor proportional reasoning skills and have emotional barriers to Mathematics and therefore Mathematical Literacy. The research will be done in three private schools located in the West Coast District of the Western Cape in South Africa. If learners in these educationally ideal environments demonstrate poor proportional reasoning skills even though they were privileged enough to have all the possible support since their formative years, then results from overcrowded government schools may be expected to be even worse. The learners in Mathematical Literacy classes often lack motivation, interest and enthusiasm when it comes to doing mathematics. Through the baseline assessment I confirm this and also suggest classroom norms and values that will help these learners to become involved in classroom activities and educational discourse. Thirdly and finally this research will focus on the design of activities that will aim to build on learners’ prior knowledge and further develop their proportional reasoning skills. I argue that activities to develop proportional reasoning should take equivalence of fractions as basis to work from. The activities will aim to help learners to set up questions in such a way that they can solve it with techniques with which they are familiar. Interconnectivity will form a vital part to this investigation. Not only do I indicate the interconnectivity between concepts in the Mathematical Literacy Learning Outcomes of the National Curriculum Statement, but I would like to make these links clear to learners when working through the proposed activities. Making links between concepts is seen as a higher order thinking skill and is part of meta-cognition which involves reflection on thoughts and processes. In short, this research can be summarised as the design of activities (with proposed activities) that aims to develop proportional reasoning by making connections between concepts and requires of learners to be active participants in their own learning. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Die doel van hierdie navorsing is drieledig. Eerstens will ek die probleme met die konsep van proporsionele denke uitlig deur eksperimentele ontwerp navorsing. Verskeie navorsers verwys na die moeilikheidsgraad van probleme wat leerders ondervind met proporsionele denke. Sommige van hierdie navorsers het ook bevind dat verskeie universiteitstudente (en ander volwassenes) nie oor die vaardigheid van proporsionele denke beskik nie. Piaget se kontroversiële ontwikkelingsvlakke klassifiseer proporsionele denke as ‘n hoër orde denkvaardigheid in sy hoogste vlak van ontwikkeling, formele operasionele denke, en noem dat meeste mense nooit hierdie vlak bereik nie. Die hoë moeilikheidsgraad van proporsionele denke en die feit dat dit ‘n vaardigheid is wat binne al die Leeruitkomste van Wiskundige Geletterdheid benodig word veroorsaak ‘n dilemma as mens dit vergelyk met die moeilikheidsgraad van die vak oor die algemeen. Tweedens wil ek met behulp van ‘n grondfase assessering bewys dat leerders wat Graad 10 Wiskunde Geletterdheid betree swak proporsionele denkvaardighede het, gepaardgaande met emosionele weerstand teenoor Wiskunde en Wiskunde Geletterdheid. Die navorsing sal gedoen word in drie privaatskole in die Weskus distrik van die Wes-Kaap van Suid-Afrika. Indien leerders in hierdie ideale opvoedkundige omstandighede swak proporsionele denkvaardighede ten toon stel, ten spyte van die feit dat hulle bevoorreg was om sedert hulle vormingsjare alle moontlike opvoedkundige ondersteuning te geniet, dan kan verwag word dat resultate komende van oorvol staatskole selfs swakker mag wees. By leerders in Wiskunde Geletterdheid klasse kan daar gereeld ‘n gebrek aan motivering, belangstelling en entoesiasme ten opsigte van Wiskunde bespeur word. Deur gebruik van die grondfase assessering wil ek hierdie stelling bewys en ook voorstelle maak vir klaskamernorme en waardes wat sal help om die leerders meer betrokke te maak by klaskameraktiwiteite en opvoedkundige gesprekke.