Design research is strongly associated with the learning sciences community, and in the 2 decades since its conception it has become broadly accepted. Yet within and without the learning sciences there remains confusion about how to do design research, with most scholarship on the approach describing what it is rather than how to do it. This…

Suppose an education researcher wants to test the impact of a high school drop-out prevention intervention in which at-risk students attend classes to receive intensive summer school instruction. The district will allow the researcher to randomly assign students to the treatment classes or to the control group. Half of the students (the treatment…

A simple and cheap laboratory class is proposed to illustrate the lethal effect of UV radiation on bacteria and the operation of different DNA repair mechanisms. The class is divided into two sessions, an initial 3-hour experimental session and a second 2-hour analytical session. The experimental session involves two separate experiments: one…

Traditionally, evaluation has primarily tried to answer the question "Does a program, service, or policy work?" Recently, more attention is given to questions about variation in program effects and the mechanisms through which program effects occur. Addressing these kinds of questions requires moving beyond assessing average program…

Students may need explicit training in informal statistical reasoning in order to design experiments or use formal statistical tests effectively. By using scientific scandals and media misinterpretation, we can explore the need for good experimental design in an informal way. This article describes the use of a paper that reviews the measles mumps…

My research is rooted in improving K-12 educational practice using motivational facets made possible through adaptive tutoring systems. In an attempt to isolate best practices within the science of learning, I conduct randomized controlled trials within ASSISTments, an online adaptive tutoring system that provides assistance and assessment to…

Reactions of neural, psychological, and social systems are rarely, if ever, independent of previous inputs and states. The potential for serial order carryover effects from one condition to the next in a sequence of experimental trials makes counterbalancing of condition order an essential part of experimental design. Here, a method is proposed…

This essay reflects upon lessons learned from engaging students as partners in the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL). The pedagogical research question addressed by this project was: Does the case study teaching method promote student engagement and learning in an introductory biology course? Student partners were actively involved in…

"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…

Instructors frequently utilize breaching experiments in an attempt to "bring sociology to life." However, an uncritical embrace of breaching experiments obscures the complexity of their possible effects on participants and subjects. These experiments have real potential to inflict deleterious consequences on individuals and groups.…

The Montessori method is an attractive alternative to traditional education for many parents in the United States of America and abroad (Lillard & Else-Quest, 2006). There are between 4,000 and 5,000 private Montessori programs in the United States, and thousands more internationally (American Montessori Society, 2016; Lillard &…

The purpose of this article is to inform researchers about and encourage the use of longitudinal designs to further understanding of human resource development and organizational theory. This article presents information about a variety of longitudinal research designs, related statistical procedures, and an overview of general data collecting…

Design-based research (DBR) is a new methodological framework that was developed in the context of the learning sciences; however, it has not been used very often in the field of gifted education. Compared with other methodologies, DBR is more process-oriented and context-sensitive. In this methodological brief, the authors introduce DBR and…

This paper will consider the phenomenon of design research. It will then consider four research positions in social science research. The paper will show how the design perspectives map onto the research paradigms and how by rotating through these paradigms, a design research cycle is formed. Finally, the paper will discuss four research questions…

Reviewers performing systematic literature reviews require understanding of the review process and of the knowledge domain. This paper presents an iterative approach for conducting systematic literature reviews that addresses the problems faced by reviewers who are novices in one or both levels of understanding. This approach is derived from…