In this article we report on middle school students' understanding of concepts related to the second step of the statistical problem-solving process, study design: create a plan and collect data. Students participated in an open-ended statistics lesson involving nonexperimental study design. For this research we analyzed the students' discourse…

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…

Astronomy education is essential for STEM education in primary schools, and integrating engineering design-based science education enhances student engagement and achievement in the field of space science. Integrating engineering design into science education is essential for students to excel in astronomy and to meet the requirements of…

Recently developed randomized-test procedures for two independent-samples single-case designs are presented and applied to a memory-strategy intervention study with eight underperforming students from low SES backgrounds. Research design aspects, data-analysis features, and various output measures are provided to demonstrate the potential utility…

Drawing upon a long-term partnership between a university and a Title I middle school, we outline relational principles that guided our justiceoriented approach to collaborative research. We conceptualize relational principles as intentional strategies for equitable relationship cultivation and infrastructure development, grounded in the values…

In paired experiments, participants are grouped into pairs with similar characteristics, and one observation from each pair is randomly assigned to treatment. The resulting treatment and control groups should be well-balanced; however, there may still be small chance imbalances. Building on work for completely randomized experiments, we propose a…

Minimum discriminant information adjustment (MDIA), an approach to weighting samples to conform to known population information, provides a generalization of raking and poststratification. In the case of simple random sampling with replacement with uniform sampling weights, large-sample properties are available for MDIA estimates of population…

Many research problems in social science involve multilevel phenomena. However, discussions about multilevel research designs are limited in the mixed methods (MM) literature. Building on early writings in the field, this methodological discussion advances a refined definition of a multilevel MM research design. The refinement emerges from a…

Background: A common critique of adventure education research methodology is the overreliance on pre-/post-study designs to measure change. Purpose: This paper compares and contrasts two methods of data analysis on the same adventure education data set to show how these distinct approaches provide starkly different results and interpretation.…

Including students with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) in general education is a common practice today. However, there are relatively few mathematics interventions for students with ASD in secondary education. There is also a lack of literature exploring mathematics interventions that reflect grade-level academic requirements and are adapted for…

Findings from experimental studies have increasingly been used to inform policy in school settings. Thus far, the populations in many of these studies are typically defined in a cross-sectional context; namely, the populations are defined in the same academic year in which the study took place or the population is defined at a fixed time point.…

In an era of global climate change, intertwined with social and ecological predation, there is growing recognition of the importance of building socially, environmentally, culturally pluralistic, just and sustainable futures. Yet many of the calls for reform and discourses around sustainability are authored and defined through top-down approaches,…

Despite great interest in the transformative mixed methods, an example of using vignettes in a multiphase mixed methods interventional study has been lacking. This study investigates the social justice problem of poverty in the context of financial education with Hong Kong early adolescent ethnic minority students. The discussion contributes to…

This follow-up study presents a design-based research (DBR) setting implemented over a three-year project called 'eKidZ - Teach Your Parents Well' which uses research-based learning and follows the four phases of DBR. In an iterative cycle, 20 teenagers aged 14-16 took on the role of researchers and investigated intergenerational learning and the…

Due to the vast territory, there are problems of unbalanced development of education and students' ability level in China. In order to explore the relation between regional education equity and the development of students' scientific ability, and to better promote the development of education and students' growth, it is urgent to carry out the…