This systematic review examines empirical research about students' motivation for NAEP in grades 4, 8, and 12 using multiple motivation constructs, including effort, value, and expectancy. Analyses yielded several findings. First, there are stark differences in the perceived importance of doing well on NAEP among students in grades 4 (86%), 8…

The ability to design and interpret controlled experiments is an important scientific process skill and a common objective of science standards. Numerous intervention studies have investigated how the control-of-variables-strategy (CVS) can be introduced to students. However, a meta-analysis of 72 intervention studies found that the opportunity to…

Randomized experiments are often considered the strongest designs to study the impact of educational interventions. Perhaps the most prevalent class of designs used in large scale education experiments is the cluster randomized design in which entire schools are assigned to treatments. In cluster randomized trials (CRTs) that assign schools to…

Although some literacy researchers consider grouping students for reading instruction to be a proven educational practice, the support for this belief is lacking from a research synthesis perspective. With this idea in mind, Slavin comments in the middle of his review on the effects of grouping: "there is not enough research on within-class…

This meta-analysis assesses the effectiveness of volunteer tutoring programs for improving the academic skills of students enrolled in public schools Grades K-8 in the United States and further investigates for whom and under what conditions tutoring can be effective. The authors found 21 studies (with 28 different study cohorts in those studies)…

This report describes the findings of an analysis of a series of action research projects conducted by Goshen Community Schools at the middle school level. During the 2008-2009 school year, six teachers at Goshen Middle School participated in independent action research studies regarding the extent to which a six step approach to direct vocabulary…