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.…

This study emerged out of collaboration between an artist-educator and a dance researcher. It explores student experience participating in a school based dance outreach program at an urban elementary school. The program is supported by a local, contemporary dance company. The artist-educator approaches teaching and curriculum with values shared by…

In 2003, Chicago launched "Double-Dose Algebra," requiring students with pretest scores below the national median to take two periods of math--algebra and supplemental coursework. In many schools, assignment to Double Dose changed the peer composition of the algebra classroom. Using school-specific instrumental variables within a…

This paper provides an overview of the recursive process of initiating an action research project on literacy for students-at-risk in a Canadian urban elementary school. As this paper demonstrates, this requires development of a school-wide framework, which frames the action research project and desired outcomes, and a shared ownership of this…

The present study evaluates the effectiveness of Check & Connect (C&C) in a randomly assigned sample of students who were all receiving Communities in Schools (CIS) services. The research questions for the study include: Are there differences in attendance, academics, and behavior for CIS students who also receive C&C compared to…

To understand heterogeneity in the effects of double-dose algebra across schools, the authors focus on two policy implementation features and their variation across schools. The first source of variation is the degree to which schools followed the cutoff-based course assignment policy. The second source of variation is the degree to which schools…

Targeting students in grades K-8, Art in Action's program consists of 12 age-appropriate lessons per year led by parent and teacher volunteers. The curriculum is based on historically significant artists and their works of art. Through semi-structured discussions, students examine a variety of masterpieces, learning about the artist as well as…

As teacher professional development research includes more experimental designs, new challenges arise. We examine the threat of participant attrition as an example of the types of problems researchers face. Counter-intuitively, higher levels of recruitment effort were related to higher dropout rates among teachers. We also found that teachers left…

Scientifically based research used to inform evidence based school reform efforts has been required by the federal government in order to receive grant funding since the reenactment of No Child Left Behind (2002). Educational evaluators are thus faced with the challenge to use rigorous research designs to establish causal relationships. However,…

Beginning in 2002, The Chicago Community Trust embarked on an ambitious grant- making strategy to improve education outcomes primarily in the city of Chicago and Cook County, Illinois. Known as The Education Initiative, this effort focused on three priority grant areas: literacy, professional development, and alternative models of schools. In…

The authors use nationally representative survey data and a research design that relies on contemporaneous within-student and within-teacher comparisons across two academic subjects to estimate how class size affects certain non-cognitive skills in middle school. Their results indicate that smaller eighth-grade classes are associated with…

Background: Health professionals are looking to nutrition-based youth health interventions in K-12 schools to combat the growing obesity crisis; however, none have explored the influences of interventions guided by constructivist learning theory. Purpose: This study examined the influences of a constructivist-oriented nutrition education program…

Children living in poverty are 1.3 times as likely as non-poor children to experience reading difficulties and lack key oral experiences that contribute to early literacy development. The purpose of this research was to study the effects of viewing commercially available educational television with closed captions. Seventy second- and third-grade…

The purpose of this study was to explore the effects of aligning classroom core reading instruction with the supplementary reading instruction provided to 133 struggling grade 2 readers. A 2-group, pre-posttest true experimental design was employed in this study. In 11 elementary schools, 12 teachers taught both the aligned and unaligned core and…

Process-product research in which the investigator observes in teachers' classrooms and tries to relate process measures of teaching behavior to product measures of student outcome has face validity appeal and common sense logic. This research approach appears to be the simplest and most direct way to identify teaching behaviors which discriminate…