This paper presents cMinds, a learning intervention that deploys game-based visual programming towards building analytical, computational, and critical thinking skills in primary education. The proposed learning method exploits the structured nature of programming, which is inherently logical and transcends cultural barriers, towards inclusive learning that exposes learners to algorithmic think...

In this article we take up a critique of the concept of Communities of Practice (CoP) voiced by several authors, who suggest that networks may provide a better metaphor to understand social forms of organisation and learning. Through a discussion of the notion of networked learning and the critique of CoPs we shall argue that the metaphor or theory of networked learning is itself confronted wit...

Analytical thinking is a transversal skill that helps learners synthesize knowledge across subject areas; from mathematics, science, and technology to critical reading, critical examination, and evaluation of lessons. While most would not doubt the importance of analytical capacity in academic settings and its growing demand for the skill in professional environments, school curricula do not co...

In this article we take up a critique of the concept of Communities of Practice (CoP) voiced by several authors, who suggest that networks may provide a better metaphor to understand social forms of organisation and learning. Through a discussion of the notion of networked learning and the critique of CoPs we shall argue that the metaphor or theory of networked learning is itself confronted wit...

The blocking effect in causal learning, once taken as a hallmark of associative learning, has recently been explained in terms of an explicit deductive reasoning process. Yet when the conditions necessary for deduction are removed, a small blocking effect is often still present. We examined the relationship between blocking and participants’ performance on analytical thinking and probabilistic ...

Direct investigations of student opinions about the use of ICT and learning are generally missing from the literature. This paper reports on a study that captured the reflective voice of students to investigate what is truly happening in Victorian schools. The focus of this study was the student learner and how students think about their own learning. The study identified key contextual factors...

We study the problem of training deep fully connected neural networks. Despite much progress in the design of activation functions, novel normalization techniques, and various skip-connection techniques, such networks remain challenging to train due to vanishing or exploding gradients. Our method is based on employing a different class-dependent learning rate to each network weight. Since the l...