This volume tackles issues arising from today’s high reliance on learning from visualizations in general and dynamic visualizations in particular at all levels of education. It reflects recent changes in educational practice through which text no longer occupies its traditionally dominant role as the prime means of presenting to-be-learned information to learners. Specifically, the book targets the dynamic visual components of multimedia educational resources and singles out how they can influence learning in their own right. It aims to help bridge the increasing gap between pervasive adoption of dynamic visualizations in educational practice and our limited understanding of the role that these representations can play in learning. The volume has recruited international leaders in the field to provide diverse perspectives on the dynamic visualizations and learning. It is the first comprehensive book on the topic that brings together contributions from both renowned researchers and expert practitioners. Rather than aiming to present a broad general overview of the field, it focuses on innovative work that is at the cutting edge. As well as further developing and complementing existing approaches, the contributions emphasize fresh ideas that may challenge existing orthodoxies and point towards future directions for the field. They seek to stimulate further new developments in the design and use of dynamic visualizations for learning as well as the rigorous, systematic investigation of their educational effectiveness.the volume="" sheds="" light="" on="" the="" complex="" and="" highly="" demanding="" processes="" of="" conceptualizing,="" developing="" implementing="" dynamic="" visualizations="" in="" practice="" as="" well="" challenges="" relating="" research="" application="" perspectives.

Modern Mathematics is constructed rigorously through proofs, based on truths, which are either axioms or previously proven theorems. Thus, it is par excellence a model of rational inquiry. Links between Cognitive Psychology and Mathematics Education have been particularly strong during the last decades. Indeed, the Enlightenment view of the rational human mind that reasons, makes decisions and solves problems based on logic and probabilities, was shaken during the second half of the twentieth century. Cognitive psychologists discovered that humans' thoughts and actions often deviate from rules imposed by strict normative theories of inference. Yet, these deviations should not be called "errors": as Cognitive Psychologists have demonstrated, these deviations may be either valid heuristics that succeed in the environments in which humans have evolved, or biases that are caused by a lack of adaptation to abstract information formats. Humans, as the cognitive psychologist and economist Herbert Simon claimed, do not usually optimize, but rather satisfice, even when solving problem. This Research Topic aims at demonstrating that these insights have had a decisive impact on Mathematics Education. We want to stress that we are concerned with the view of bounded rationality that is different from the one espoused by the heuristics-and-biases program. In Simon’s bounded rationality and its direct descendant ecological rationality, rationality is understood in terms of cognitive success in the world (correspondence) rather than in terms of conformity to content-free norms of coherence (e.g., transitivity).

As technology continues to play a pivotal role in society, education is a field that has become heavily influenced by these advancements. New learning methods are rapidly emerging and being implemented into classrooms across the world using software that is low cost and easy to handle. These tools are crucial in creating skillful learning techniques in classrooms, yet there is a lack of information and research on the subject. The Handbook of Research on Software for Gifted and Talented School Activities in K-12 Classrooms is an essential reference source that discusses newly developed but easy-to-handle and less costly software and tools and their implementation in real 21st-century classrooms worldwide. The book also helps and supports teachers to conduct gifted and talented school activities in K-12 classrooms. Featuring research on topics such as educational philosophy and skillful learning techniques, this book is ideally designed for software developers, educators, researchers, psychologists, instructional designers, curriculum developers, principals, academicians, and students seeking coverage on the emerging role that newly developed software plays in early education.

Dynamic visualizations can strengthen chemistry instruction by illustrating atomic level phenomena. Visualizations can help students add ideas about unseen phenomena involving atomic particles. They allow students to interact with phenomena that cannot be investigated in hands-on laboratories. Connecting dynamic, atomic representations with associated observable phenomena and symbolic representations has the potential to increase the coherence and comprehensiveness of student understanding. Consistent with the knowledge integration framework, students enter chemistry courses with multiple non-normative ideas about chemical reactions. Following the knowledge integration framework, an inquiry project entitled Hydrogen Fuel Cell Cars engaged students in making predictions, exploring new ideas, distinguishing among ideas, and reflecting while connecting atomic interactions to everyday issues such as cars and fuel. To add normative ideas, a dynamic visualization that shows bond breaking and formation during hydrogen combustion was embedded in the unit. Using an iterative design process, a series of studies compared four approaches to distinguishing ideas: unguided exploration of the visualization, generating drawings of the sequence of events in the visualization, critiquing sequences of drawings attributed to a peer, and selecting among alternatives sequences. Progress was assessed using assessments that required students to articulate coherent accounts of chemical reactions. The dissertation describes the design and development of the instruction, reports on a series of comparison studies conducted in typical middle schools that compare student performance in each of the four conditions: exploration, drawing, critique, and selection. The results reveal that visualizations can be deceptively clear so students may ignore important details when exploring a visualization. When learners generate, select, or critique drawings of atomic interactions, they recognize gaps in their knowledge, develop criteria for distinguishing among ideas, and increase in ability to select normative ideas. The dissertation demonstrates the importance of encouraging students to distinguish ideas when learning with visualizations. It suggests design principles for creating instructions featuring visualizations that can succeed in typical classrooms.

Visualizations are visual representations of non-visual data. They are produced for people to interact with and to make sense of the underlying data. Rapid advances in display technology and computer power have enabled researchers to produce visually appealing pictures. However, the effectiveness of those pictures in conveying the embedded information to end users has not been fully explored. Handbook of Human Centric Visualization addresses issues related to design, evaluation and application of visualizations. Topics include visualization theories, design principles, evaluation methods and metrics, human factors, interaction methods and case studies. This cutting-edge book includes contributions from well-established researchers worldwide, from diverse disciplines including psychology, visualization and human-computer interaction. This handbook is designed for a professional audience composed of practitioners, lecturers and researchers working in the field of computer graphics, visualization, human-computer interaction and psychology. Undergraduate and postgraduate students in science and engineering focused on this topic will also find this book useful as a comprehensive textbook or reference.