Erno Lehtinen

University of Turku | UTU · Centre for Learning Research, OTUK

A cognitive theory of visual expertise is proposed to model the visual information processing of domain experts. During theory development, we integrated empirical evidence from multiple methods of inquiry-including qualitative observations, qualitative interviews, eye tracking, and neuroimaging-used in research on learning and instruction in the p...

As students learn biology at different levels of education, their tenacious and inaccurate prior conceptions pose a challenge to conceptual change. Educators and researchers have developed a variety of interventions to address these misinterpretations and promote the achievement of current scientific understanding. Despite an ever-growing body of l...

A growing body of research has suggested that mindset is one powerful predictor of students' academic achievement and that students are likely to hold self-beliefs about the malleability or stability of their academic abilities. In the domain of mathematics education, a belief in ‘math brain’ – as something you do or do not possess – is widely prev...

Despite the significant research interest in teachers’ innovative activities, the role of work experience and professional development (PD) as predictors of science teachers’ innovative work behaviour has rarely been studied. By using the TIMSS 2015 data of three countries with different levels of student achievements in science (Japan, Lithuania a...

Adaptive expertise is a highly sought after, but difficult to achieve, outcome of mathematics education. Many teaching methods appear to support the development of adaptive expertise only in a small proportion of students. Game-based learning environments may be useful for supporting adaptive expertise. Therefore, we carried out a quasi-experimenta...

Adaptive expertise is a highly sought after, but difficult to achieve, outcome of mathematics education. Many teaching methods appear to support the development of adaptive expertise only in a small proportion of students. Game-based learning environments may be useful for supporting adaptive expertise. Therefore, we carried out a quasi-experimenta...

The paper presents an overview of challenges and demands related to teachers’ digital skills and technology integration into educational content and processes. The paper raises a debate how technologies have created new skills gaps in pre-service and in-service teacher training and how that affected traditional forms of teacher education. According...

Strengthening adaptive expertise in mathematics education through deliberate practice is a challenging task in traditional classrooms. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether Number Navigation Game (NNG) promotes deliberate practice and how the game performance profiles relate to Adaptive Number Knowledge (ANK) development, perceived c...

Workplace learning takes place in conditions that are, in many respects, different from that occurring in on educational institution. Due to this, essential workplace learning may not always be apparent and may therefore be difficult to capture with conventional methods of learning research. The present book discusses methodological issues from the...

Rational number knowledge is a crucial feature of primary school mathematics that predicts students’ later mathematics achievement. Many students struggle with the transition from natural number to rational number reasoning, so novel pedagogical approaches to support the development of rational number knowledge are valuable to mathematics educators...

Background: Adaptive expertise is a highly valued outcome of mathematics curricula. One aspect of adaptive expertise with rational numbers is adaptive rational number knowledge, which refers to the ability to integrate knowledge of numerical characteristics and relations in solving novel tasks. Even among students with strong conceptual and proced...

The present chapter provides an overview of the iterative development and testing of the Number Navigation Game (NNG), a game-based learning environment which aims to strengthen primary school students’ flexibility and adaptivity with arithmetic problem solving. The set of studies described in this chapter asked different questions using different...

n their chapter onConceptions of learning and knowledge in higher education:Relationships with study behaviour and influences of learning environments, Entwistleand Peterson consider a series of interrelated concepts that have been shown to beassociated with student learnin gin hi gher education, includin gconceptions ofknowledge and learning, lear...

The aim of this study was to investigate differences in student teachers’ and experienced teachers’ professional vision in natural settings and to elicit clues of the relation of in-the-moment noticing and instruction quality of students’ understanding of rational number concept. Rational number concept challenges both students and teachers because...

The published online article contains mistake and the authors would like to correct them.

In this chapter, we describe challenges of early childhood math education and propose that enhancing children’s mathematically focused activities not only in formal educational contexts but also in more informal settings is one solution to these challenges. Spontaneous mathematical focusing tendencies are argued to affect the mathematically relevan...

Location-based applications (LBAs) capture the user’s physical location via satellite navigation sensors and integrate it as part of the digital application. Because of this connection, the real-world environment needs to be accounted for in LBA design. In this work, we focused on creating a database of geographically distributed points of interest...

Online education provides learning opportunities to a global audience. Most popular MOOC platforms have millions of users and MOOC designers are already competing with each other on how to spark and retain the interest of students. However, currently in popular MOOCs, roughly 90% of enrolled students yield their participation and previous research...

The number of available educational games has enormously grown and it is difficult for users to identify which games are pedagogically effective among the multitude of options in app marketplaces. Recent studies on math games have highlighted the importance of (1) linking learning attributes and gameplay and (2) game design that supports students'...

Adaptive expertise is a valued, but under-examined, feature of students' mathematical development (e.g. Hatano & Oura, 2012). The present study investigates the nature of adaptive expertise with rational number arithmetic. We therefore examined 394 7th and 8th graders’ rational number knowledge using both variable-centered and person-centered appro...

Classroom professional vision is a teaching skill that refers to the ability of teachers to rapidly notice information in class and engage in knowledge-based reasoning about the noticed information. Knowledge-based reasoning includes three interrelated processes: description, explanation, and prediction. The present study aimed to examine how pre-s...

Serious games for learning have received increased attention in recent years. However, empirical studies on students’ gaming experiences throughout the developmental process of serious games and discussions regarding game design are missing. The aims of the present study were to analyze students’ gaming experiences while playing four consecutive ve...

Eye tracking is a powerful technique that helps to reveal how people process visual information. This paper discusses a novel metric for indicating expertise in visual information processing, named the Gaze Relational Index (GRI), which is defined as the ratio of mean fixation duration to fixation count. Data from two eye-tracking studies of profes...

Changes in working life require knowledge, which is sometimes radically different from existing expertise. Learning based on existing knowledge is not sufficient. Some knowledge is difficult to learn because it is counterintuitive. Research on conceptual change has extensively studied this type of learning challenges while students are learning sci...

The purpose of this study was to explore affect in small groups learning together face-to-face in a virtual learning environment. The specific aims of the study were to establish how affect within groups (valence, intensity) related to the quality of group outcome (high, average, low), and to capture individual differences within the groups by usin...

Bloomsbury Education and Childhood Studies

Rapid and radical changes in science, technology and society may result in new scientific concepts and new workplace practices, which require fundamental restructuring of prior knowledge. Over the years a noteworthy body of research has documented the processes of conceptual change, the learning mechanisms involved, and the instructional methods an...

The present study aims to examine inter-individual differences in adaptive number knowledge in secondary school students. Adaptive number knowledge is defined as a well-connected network of knowledge of numerical characteristics and arithmetic relations. Substantial and relevant qualitative differences in the strategies and expression of adaptive n...

In this study we investigated word-problem (WP) item characteristics, individual differences in text comprehension and arithmetic skills, and their relations to mathematical WP-solving. The participants were 891 fourth-grade students from elementary schools in Finland. Analyses were conducted in two phases. In the first phase, WP characteristics co...

Goodwin’s notion of professional vision suggests that learning to see in professionally relevant ways includes appropriating the visual practices within a domain. This observational study aimed to analyze how experts communicate these visual practices to novices to help them make meaning of domain-specific representations. Informed by a sociocultur...

The focus of expertise research is on exceptionally advanced performance in professions that require long academic—and at least partly scientific—education before entering into work. Surprisingly, only a few studies have systematically examined the role of scientific thinking in expertise development. Many studies have shown that initial scientific...

Developing adaptive expertise with arithmetic problem solving is a much desired aim of primary school mathematics education. However, there are very few practical tools for teachers that would aid reaching this complex mathematical learning goal. The aim of the present study was to test the effects of a game-based learning environment in supporting...

The purpose of the present study is to investigate gender and cultural background similarities among adolescents’ patterns of networking within a multicultural Finnish school. The participants consisted of 109 seventh to ninth graders who represented three cultural groups: major-culture (n = 50; 46%), bi-culture (n = 26; 24%) and minor-culture (n =...

The present study focused on 212 fifth graders' situational interest trajectories during an intervention with a digital mathematics game called Number Navigation. Our aims were to explore the development of situational interest whilst playing the game and to investigate the relationship between situational interest and individual math interest. Gro...

Spontaneous focusing on quantitative relations (SFOR) has been shown to be a strong predictor of rational number conceptual development in late primary school. The present study outlines an intervention program that examines the possibilities to enhance late primary school students' SFOR tendency. The intervention program harnessed mobile technolog...

Spontaneous Focusing On quantitative Relations (SFOR) has been found to predict the development of rational number conceptual knowledge in primary students. Additionally, rational number knowledge has been shown to be related to later algebra knowledge. However, it is not yet clear: (a) the relative consistency of SFOR across multiple measurement p...

Learning outcomes as a concept has encountered a revival since the beginning of the Bologna process in 1999. The concept itself has a longer history with its roots in the behaviourist tradition of the 1960s. The goal of this review is to study how the historical roots of learning outcomes are noted in current research articles since the launch of t...

A Word Problem Enrichment programme (WPE) has been found to increase student word problem solving performance when facing non-routine and application problems. However, it is unknown if the WPE has an impact on student beliefs about word problem solving, and how the WPE works for students with different motivation in learning mathematics. This stud...

Research indicates that expert performance is domain specific and hardly transfers to novel tasks or domains. However, due to technological changes in dynamic work settings, experts sometimes need to adapt and transfer their skills to new task affordances. The present mixed method study investigates whether eye movement modeling examples (EMME) can...

Contemporary theories of expertise development highlight the crucial role of deliberate practice in the development of high level performance. Deliberate practice is practice that intentionally aims at improving one’s skills and competencies. It is not a mechanical or repetitive process of making performance more fluid. Instead, it involves a great...

Traditionally measured skills with arithmetic are not related to later algebra success at levels that would be expected given the close conceptual relation between arithmetic and algebra. However, adaptivity with arithmetic may be one aspect of arithmetic competences that can account for additional variation in algebra attainment. With this in mind...

Background. Serious games are often used in formal school contexts, in which students’ lack of control over the playing situation may have repercussions on any motivational gains. Aims and Method. The first aim was to investigate to what extent n = 579 fifth grade students in Mexico who received a mathematics serious game played it voluntarily. The...

This article examines a new training design for continuing professional development that aims to support the learning of the novel knowledge and skills needed in emerging professional fields by interconnecting academic and workplace settings. The training design is based on using two advisors, one from working life and the other from an academic co...

The present study investigates whether medical students’ prior knowledge and perceptions about basic biomedical sciences predict learning of these topics at early phases of the medical education. Participants (N = 115) were first year medical students at the University of Turku (Finland). The data consisted of a student perception questionnaire, en...

Concepts of rational numbers have repeatedly been proven to be a problematic topic to comprehend across age groups. During the learning of fractions and decimals, students have been found to have a natural number bias where concepts of natural numbers (e.g. larger digits means a larger number) are inappropriately applied to rational numbers. Thus,...

The purpose of this study is to compare the characteristics of word problems used in a selection of Thai and Finnish mathematics textbooks. A total of 1,565 word problems from a series of 2nd grade to 4th grade Thai and Finnish mathematics textbooks were analysed. The results show that the characteristics of word problems used in Thai textbooks dif...

Many people have serious difficulties in understanding rational numbers, limiting their ability to interpret and make use of them in modern daily life. This also leads to later difficulties in learning more advanced mathematical content. In this study, novel tasks are used to measure 263 late primary school students' spontaneous focusing on quantit...

The purpose of this study is to compare the characteristics of word problems used in a selection of Thai and Finnish mathematics textbooks. A total of 1,565 word problems from a series of 2 nd grade to 4 th grade Thai and Finnish mathematics textbooks were analysed. The results show that the characteristics of word problems used in Thai textbooks d...

In this commentary we take a critical look at the various studies being reported in this issue about the relationship between cognitive neuroscience and mathematics, from a mathematics education viewpoint. After a discussion of the individual contributions, which we have grouped into three categories—namely neuroscientific studies of (a) children’s...

Adaptivity with arithmetic problem solving is a key aspect in the long-term development of mathematical skills, and the knowledge of numerical characteristics and relations is a core component of adaptivity with whole-number arithmetic. The present studies represent the first attempt to investigate the nature of the adaptive number knowledge, refer...

Li and Baroody presented a study in which they investigate children' spontaneous attention to exact quantity without acknowledging how previous studies of spontaneous focusing on numerosity (SFON) are related to their concept and methods. The authors' reaction to our pointing this out makes it is clear that SFON research has had foundational role i...

Many difficulties learners have with rational number tasks can be attributed to the "natural number bias", i.e. the tendency to inappropriately use natural number properties in rational numbers tasks (Van Hoof, 2015). McMullen and colleagues found a relevant source of individual differences in the learning of those aspects of rational numbers that...

This chapter describes the Number Navigation Game (NNG), a game-based learning environment aimed at the promotion of flexibility and adaptivity with arithmetical problem solving in 10- to 13-year-old students. The game design is based on an integrated approach in which the different elements of the game are directly related to the mathematical cont...

Research suggests that adaptivity with arithmetic problem solving can be developed by placing more focus on developing students’ understanding of the underlying numerical characteristics and connections during problem solving. For this reason, the present study aimed to explore how primary school students’ game performance using the “Number Navigat...

Number Navigation Game-based learning environment (NNG) is a mathematical game-based learning environment designed to enhance students’ adaptivity with arithmetic problem solving and to increase their motivation towards math. Fourth through sixth grade classrooms were randomly assigned into either an experimental group (students n = 642) which play...

Li and Baroody present a study in which they investigate toddlers’ spontaneous attention to exact quantity without acknowledging how previous studies of spontaneous focusing on numerosity (SFON) are related to their concept and methods. In this commentary requested by the European Journal of Developmental Psychology, we argue that the concept and t...

The past decade witnessed increasing interest and extremely positive beliefs in the use of games, and especially so-called “serious” games, as educational tools. This AGBL-book on “Describing and studying domain-specific serious games” aims at complementing our current insights into the effectiveness of games as educational tools. In this introduct...

This book describes research outcomes on domain-specific serious games. The first part of the book focuses on the design and major characteristics of actual (mainly math-related) serious games. The second part of the book presents recent empirical studies on these games, exploring topics such as the effectiveness of serious games for learning and i...

The present study focuses on the development of two sub-concepts necessary for a complete mathematical understanding of rational numbers, a) representations of the magnitudes of rational numbers and b) the density of rational numbers. While difficulties with rational number concepts have been seen in students' of all ages, including educated adults...

This seven-year longitudinal study examined how children’s spontaneous focusing on numerosity (SFON), subitizing based enumeration, and counting skills assessed at five or six years predict their school mathematics achievement at 12 years. The participants were 36 Finnish children without diagnosed neurological disorders. The results, based on part...

Recent evidence suggests that early natural number knowledge is a predictor of later rational number conceptual knowledge, even though students’ difficulties with rational numbers have also been explained by the overuse of natural number concepts—often referred to as the natural number bias. Hannula and Lehtinen (2005) have shown that children’s te...