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…

Even though experimental design (ED) in open inquiry is important for more authentic scientific inquiry, it is not easy for students. The objective of this research was to identify factors considered important in students' ED and explore how to utilize it to improve students' ED. To achieve the objective, in the first step, eighteen middle-school…

A central premise of this project is that teachers learn from the act of teaching a lesson and that this learning is evident in the planning and teaching of a subsequent lesson. In this project, the knowledge construction of mathematics teachers was examined utilising multi-camera research techniques during lesson planning, classroom interactions…

The purpose of this paper is to showcase new research that seeks to provide guidance on the heterogeneity of treatment effects by utilizing the variance of demographic differences in state assessments. This study is focused on a simple randomized block design where students are nested within schools, and within each school students are randomized…

"Research says…" a lot. But how does research come to say anything? One way is by having teachers open their classroom doors to a researcher. In this article, we share the stories of two teachers who opened their doors to the authors' research and were glad they did. The teachers contrast this experience to other research experiences in…

Technology integration in K-12 classrooms is usually teacher-centered and has insufficient impact on students' learning. The purpose of this project is to facilitate science teachers' use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) as cognitive tools to shift their practices from teacher-centered methods to constructivist,…

Instruction in history is important for all students. However, students with specific learning disabilities (SLD) often struggle to learn information in this content area. Instructional strategies proven effective for students with SLD are those that include active student responding (ASR), which are observable, measurable responses to…

One obstacle to understanding abstract concepts such as the "control of variables" strategy (CVS) is the tendency for learners to focus on surface rather than deep features in instructional materials. However, in tasks such as learning CVS, these same surface features may also support understanding, provided learners realize the…

We present the results of a study of local education agency (LEA)-based interventions to improve the reading outcomes of struggling readers in sixth grade. The sample included 1,076 intervention students and 3,644 comparison students. Regression discontinuity was used to evaluate intervention impact. The study contributes to the field by…

The current study investigated the relationship between students' attitudes towards school, values of education, achievement motivation and academic achievement. Accordingly, the study adopted a correlation research design. To achieve the objectives of the study, 362 students using systematic sampling technique were taken from grade 9 students of…

This study explores the possibilities for learning content that might accompany the use of an historically accurate graphic novel as part of a language arts instructional unit. During a 6-day unit, 16 sixth grade students engaged in graphic novels in ways that support comprehension, both in the context of a graphic novel text set and a specific…

Background: Recent research investigating the conditions under which science teachers can successfully implement science education reforms suggests that focusing only on professional development to improve content knowledge and teaching skills--often referred to as human capital--may not be enough. Increasingly, possessing social capital, defined…

For years scholars have attended to either generic or content-specific teaching practices attempting to understand instructional quality and its effects on student learning. Drawing on the TIMSS 2007 and 2011 databases, this exploratory study empirically tests the hypothesis that attending to both types of practices can help better explain student…

Questions regarding the generalizability of results from educational experiments have been at the forefront of methods development over the past five years. This work has focused on methods for estimating the effect of an intervention in a well-defined inference population (e.g., Tipton, 2013; O'Muircheartaigh and Hedges, 2014); methods for…

Little is known empirically about intraclass correlations (ICCs) for multisite cluster randomized trial (MSCRT) designs, particularly in science education. In this study, ICCs suitable for science achievement studies using a three-level (students in schools in districts) MSCRT design that block on district are estimated and examined. Estimates of…