This study investigated the effectiveness of ABRACADABRA (ABRA), a web-based literacy program, developed by the Center for the Study of Learning and Performance at Concordia University, in facilitating the literacy attainment of third-grade primary school students in an area of rural China. Researchers shared the experiences of localizing ABRA to…

Teacher coaching is a powerful form of professional learning that improves teaching practices and student achievement, yet little is known about the specific aspects of coaching programs that are more effective. Researchers used a blocked randomized experiment to study the effects of one-to-one coaching on teacher practice. When pooled across all…

The majority of studies that have investigated empathic responsiveness of individuals with Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have used heterogeneous groups in terms of age, cognitive level and gender which significantly impact the results. Our aim in this study was to explore responsiveness of a more homogenous sample of 21 children with ASD and 17…

In a randomized controlled trial (RCT), treatments are assigned randomly and treatments are withheld from participants. Is it ethically permissible to conduct an RCT in a social setting? This paper addresses two conditions for justifying RCTs: that there should be a state of equipoise and that the trial should be scientifically promising.…

From early in development, humans have strong prosocial tendencies. Much research has documented young children's propensity to help others achieve their unfulfilled goals toward physical objects. Yet many of our most common and important goals are social--directed toward other people. Here we demonstrate that children are also inclined, and able,…

As the US continues to diversify, methods for accurately assessing human behavior must evolve. This paper offers multicultural research considerations at several stages of the research process for psychological research and consultation. Implications regarding the comparative research framework are discussed and suggestions are offered on how to…

This paper evaluates the behavioural responses of multitask agents to the provision of incentives skewed towards one task only. In particular it studies the case of strong research incentives for university professors and it analyzes their effects on the way university faculty members allocate effort between teaching and quantity and quality of…

Background: This article describes the process of including people with intellectual disabilities (ID) and carers of people with ID as researchers and participants in randomised controlled trial (RCT) research. People with ID are rarely involved in research about their health, either as researchers or participants. Carers are often included as…

This paper reports on teachers' use of concept mapping as an alternative assessment strategy in advanced level biology classes and its effects on students' cognitive skills on selected biology concepts. Using a mixed methods approach, the study employed a pre-test/post-test quasi-experimental design involving 156 students and 8 teachers from…

This paper includes a nontechnical description of methods for calculating effect sizes in intellectual and developmental disability studies. Different hypothetical studies are used to illustrate how null hypothesis significance testing (NHST) and effect size findings can result in quite different outcomes and therefore conflicting results. Whereas…

"t"-Tests are widely used by researchers to compare the average values of a numeric outcome between two groups. If there are doubts about the suitability of the data for the requirements of a "t"-test, most notably the distribution being non-normal, the Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney test may be used instead. However, although often…

The Helping Early Literacy with Practice Strategies (HELPS) Program was developed by integrating 8 evidence-based fluency-building instructional strategies into a structured program that can be feasibly implemented by educators. The HELPS Program has been shown in previous research to significantly improve elementary-aged students' reading…

Educational researchers have suggested that computer games have a profound influence on students' motivation, knowledge construction, and learning performance, but little empirical research has targeted preschoolers. Thus, the purpose of the present study was to investigate the effects of implementing a computer game that integrates the…

Recent work that has examined the impact of what are variously called periodic, interim, benchmark, or diagnostic assessments, typically administered three or four times during a school year, has produced mixed findings. For instance, one study reported small significant effects in mathematics in grades 3-8, but not in reading (Carlson et al.,…

This quasi-experimental study investigated the effects of an Internet-delivered universally designed depth of vocabulary intervention that targeted both English-speaking and Spanish-English-speaking students. Two hundred forty students, 49% of whom were Spanish-English bilinguals, participated in the 16-week intervention. Intervention students…