This paper reports the findings of the second year of a four-year empirical research project. Its aim is to modify 'step-by-step' instructions for practical activities in a way that may enable the development of experimental design skills among junior high school learners. Each school year pupils spend six lessons doing practical activities using…

Ratio and proportional relationships, along with the interrelated topics of fractions,decimals, and percent, provide a critical foundation for algebra (National Mathematics Advisory Panel, 2008). Proportional reasoning, which not only requires understanding the concept of ratios and that two or more ratios are equal, also requires the ability to…

Successful school reform is dependent on the quality of decisions made by educational leaders. In such decision making, educational leaders are charged with using sound research findings as the basis for choosing school reform initiatives. As part of the debate regarding the usability of various evaluative research designs in providing information…

One approach to reducing persistent racial/ethnic achievement gaps is to tackle their social-psychological dimensions, including the negative consequences of stereotype threat and other identity threats in school. Initial research suggested that a particularly promising approach is brief self-affirmation writing exercises for 7th grade students;…

The literature suggests that adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) typically are not socially engaged during unstructured school activities and do not initiate social activities with typically developing peers. This study assessed whether implementing socialization opportunities in the form of lunch clubs based around aspects of the…

The regression discontinuity design (RDD) has the potential to yield findings with causal validity approaching that of the randomized controlled trial (RCT). However, Schochet (2008a) estimated that, on average, an RDD study of an education intervention would need to include three to four times as many schools or students as an RCT to produce…

This experimental study evaluated the effectiveness of a research-based intervention, schema-based instruction (SBI), on students' proportional problem solving. SBI emphasizes the underlying mathematical structure of problems, uses schematic diagrams to represent information in the problem text, provides explicit problem-solving and metacognitive…

This experimental study evaluated the effectiveness of a research-based intervention, schema-based instruction (SBI), on students' proportional problem solving. SBI emphasizes the underlying mathematical structure of problems, uses schematic diagrams to represent information in the problem text, provides explicit problem solving and metacognitive…

The concept of "implementation fidelity" is broadly used to capture the extent to which an intervention is executed as intended by the designers of the intervention (Century, Rudnick, & Freeman, 2010; Huntley, 2005, McNaught, Tarr, & Sears, 2010, Munter, 2010). Though implementation fidelity instruments are often used to assess…

Randomized trials of educational interventions often face logistical hurdles (Cook, 2002). For example, sometimes they are prevented from reaching their full-term. This would happen if, as a condition of participation, subjects insist on receiving the treatment program within a certain timeframe. This timeframe may be shorter than the full-term…

The potential for music programs to promote psychosocial wellbeing in mainstream schools is recognised in both policy and research literature. Despite this recognition, there is a dearth of consistent research evidence supporting this link. Authors attribute this lack of consistent evidence to limitations in the areas of research design and…

Despite impressive advances in the science of reading intervention, how to best help at-risk readers remains a point of contention. Because reading represents the synthesis of background factors and language and reading skills--all of which develop with age and experience--this meta-analysis investigated whether development (as approximated by…

A pre-post experimental design with 6-week delayed posttest was implemented to investigate the effects of reading comprehension strategy (RCS) instruction with and without attribution retraining (AR) on reading outcomes for seventh, eighth, and ninth graders with learning and other mild disabilities. Students were randomly assigned to one of three…

Communities That Care (CTC) is a prevention system designed to reduce adolescent substance use and delinquency through the selection of effective preventive interventions tailored to a community's specific profile of risk and protection. A community-randomized trial of CTC, the Community Youth Development Study, is currently being conducted in 24…

This is the first of two reports that summarize the findings from an impact evaluation of a violence prevention intervention for middle schools. This report discusses findings after 1 year of implementation. A forthcoming report will discuss the findings after 2 years and 3 years of implementation. In 2004, the U.S. Department of Education (ED)…