Block-based visual programming tools, such as Scratch, Alice, and MIT App Inventor, provide an intuitive and easy-to-use editing interface through which to promote programming learning for novice students of various ages. However, very little attention has been paid to investigating these tools' overall effects on students' academic achievement…

Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) can be at risk of bias. Using data from a RCT, we considered the impact of post-randomisation bias. We compared the trial primary outcome, which was administered blindly, with the secondary outcome, which was not administered blindly. From 44 schools, 522 children were randomised to receive a one-to-one maths…

When evaluators plan site-randomized experiments, they must conduct the appropriate statistical power analyses. These analyses are most likely to be valid when they are based on data from the jurisdictions in which the studies are to be conducted. In this method note, we provide software code, in the form of a SAS macro, for producing statistical…

We investigated whether 6- and 7-year-olds and 9- and 10-year-olds, as well as adults, process object dimensions independent of or in interaction with one another in a perception and action task by adapting Ganel and Goodale's method for testing adults ("Nature", 2003, Vol. 426, pp. 664-667). In addition, we aimed to confirm Ganel and Goodale's…

Visual short-term memory (VSTM) research suggests that the adult capacity is limited to three or four multifeature object representations. Despite evidence supporting a developmental increase in capacity, it remains unclear what the unit of capacity is in children. The current study employed the change detection paradigm to investigate both the…

This publication contains 12 (A3 open-out) poster-style reports of teacher experimental research. The style of presentation parallels the type of preliminary reporting common at academic conferences and postgraduate events. At the same time, it aims to act as a form of short primer to introduce teachers to the basic options that there are when…

We apply instrumental variables (IV) techniques to a pooled data set of employment-focused experiments to examine the relation between type of preschool childcare and subsequent externalizing problem behavior for a large sample of low-income children. To assess the potential usefulness of this approach for addressing biases that can confound…

Building on the claim that teachers need to know how innovative instructional approaches work to be able to adapt them to their own classrooms, design research is presented as a research method that aims to offer exactly that kind of information. We elaborate design research that aims to develop a local instruction theory--a theory about the…

This article examines theoretical and empirical issues related to the statistical power of impact estimates for experimental evaluations of education programs. The author considers designs where random assignment is conducted at the school, classroom, or student level, and employs a unified analytic framework using statistical methods from the…