Virtual experiments are widely used in the field of education for their low cost, strong interaction, hyperspace and safety advantages. While some researchers have analysed the impact of virtual technologies such as AR or VR on teaching effectiveness, few researchers have comprehensively explored the impact of virtual experiments on students'…

By providing students with a highly interactive and hands-on learning experience, robotics promises to inspire a new generation of mathematical learning. This paper aims to review the empirical evidence on the application of robotics in mathematics education and to define future research perspectives of robot-assisted mathematics education. After…

A key consideration in planning studies of community-based HIV education programs is identifying a sample size large enough to ensure a reasonable probability of detecting program effects if they exist. Sufficient sample sizes for community- or group-based designs are proportional to the correlation or similarity of individuals within communities.…

We develop a theoretical and empirical basis for the design of teacher professional development studies. We build on previous work by (a) developing estimates of intraclass correlation coefficients for teacher outcomes using two- and three-level data structures, (b) developing estimates of the variance explained by covariates, and (c) modifying…

An appropriate estimate of statistical power is critical for the design of intervention studies. Although the inclusion of a pretest covariate in the test of the primary outcome can increase statistical power, samples selected on the basis of pretest performance may demonstrate range restriction on the selection measure and other correlated…

Despite recent shifts in research emphasizing the value of carefully designed experiments, the number of studies of teacher professional development with rigorous designs has lagged behind its student outcome counterparts. We outline a framework for the design of group randomized trials (GRTs) with teachers' knowledge as the outcome and…

With research indicating substantial differences among teachers in terms of their effectiveness (Nye, Konstantopoulous, & Hedges, 2004), a major focus of recent research in education has been on improving teacher quality through professional development (Desimone, 2009; Institute of Educations Sciences [IES], 2012; Measures of Effective…

In as much as educational research is concerned with individual student assessment and development, it is surprising that single-subject designs are not more readily utilized in classroom-based action research. The purpose of this article is to emphasize benefits of single-subject research in the K-12 setting, given that teachers teach and assess…

Objectives: Group-randomized designs are well suited for studies of professional development because they can accommodate programs that are delivered to intact groups (e.g., schools), the collaborative nature of professional development, and extant teacher/school assignments. Though group designs may be theoretically favorable, prior evidence has…

This review examines the effectiveness of educational technology applications in improving the reading achievement of struggling readers in elementary schools. The review applies consistent inclusion standards to focus on studies that met high methodological standards. A total of 20 studies based on about 7,000 students in grades K-6 were included…

This article examines theoretical and empirical issues related to the statistical power of impact estimates under clustered regression discontinuity (RD) designs. The theory is grounded in the causal inference and hierarchical linear modeling literature, and the empirical work focuses on common designs used in education research to test…

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…

This report lays out the design for the Evaluation of Reading Comprehension Interventions, which is assessing supplemental reading comprehension programs for fifth-grade students in Title I schools. The key design parameters are described. The report itself provides the rationale for these decisions and discusses design and measurement issues,…

This paper examines issues related to the statistical power of impact estimates for experimental evaluations of education programs. The focus is on "group-based" experimental designs, because many studies of education programs involve random assignment at the group level (for example, at the school or classroom level) rather than at the student…