Recently published social science research suggests that students attending schools with concentrations of disadvantaged racial minority populations achieve less academic progress than their otherwise comparable counterparts in more racially balanced or integrated schools, but to date no meta-analysis has estimated the effect size of school racial…

Despite increasing emphasis on preparing more and better teachers and despite the near universal presence of student teaching across teacher education programs (TEPs), numerous questions about what and how student teaching experiences contribute to preservice teachers' development remain unanswered. Indeed, much of the attention focused on student…

One influential hypothesis for what makes teachers effective contends that the best teachers share a particular set of values about education, such as commitment, caring, or persistence. To translate affective beliefs, attitudes, and values into practicable teacher selection, many schools have turned to commercial teacher hiring instruments. This…

In response to rapidly changing demographics and increased racial tensions, institutions across the country have implemented diversity-related initiatives--to varying degrees--designed to promote positive intergroup relations. This increased interest has resulted in a growing body of research examining the impact of curricular and cocurricular…

This article synthesizes the experimental literature that compares the academic, cognitive, and behavioral performance of adults with reading disabilities to those of average-achieving adult readers. The central question posed by this review is to what extent and in what manner do adults with reading disabilities differ from adults without reading…

This meta-analysis of the experimental literature of distance education (DE) compares different types of interaction treatments (ITs) with other DE instructional treatments. ITs are the instructional and/or media conditions designed into DE courses, which are intended to facilitate student-student (SS), student-teacher (ST), or student-content…

Peer review is valued in higher education, but also widely criticized in terms of potential biases, particularly gender. We evaluate gender differences in peer reviews of grant applications, extending Bornmann, Mutz, and Daniel's meta-analyses that reported small gender differences in favor of men (d = 0.04), but a substantial heterogeneity in…

A meta-analysis of 69 data sets ( N = 125,308) was carried out on studies that simultaneously evaluate the effects of math and verbal achievements on math and verbal self-concepts. As predicted by the internal/external frame of reference (I/E) model, math and verbal achievements were highly correlated overall (0.67), but the correlation between…

New emphasis is being placed on the importance of parent involvement in children's education. In a synthesis of research on the effects of parent involvement in homework, a meta-analysis of 14 studies that manipulated parent training for homework involvement reveals that training parents to be involved in their child's homework results in (a)…

Including English language learners (ELLs) in large-scale assessments raises questions about the validity of inferences based on their scores. Test accommodations for ELLs are intended to reduce the impact of limited English proficiency on the assessment of the target construct, most often mathematic or science proficiency. This meta-analysis…

This meta-analysis assesses the effectiveness of volunteer tutoring programs for improving the academic skills of students enrolled in public schools Grades K-8 in the United States and further investigates for whom and under what conditions tutoring can be effective. The authors found 21 studies (with 28 different study cohorts in those studies)…

This meta-analysis examines to what extent interactive storybook reading stimulates two pillars of learning to read: vocabulary and print knowledge. The authors quantitatively reviewed 31 (quasi) experiments (n = 2,049 children) in which educators were trained to encourage children to be actively involved before, during, and after joint book…

A meta-analysis of the relationship between class attendance in college and college grades reveals that attendance has strong relationships with both class grades (k = 69, N = 21,195, p = 0.44) and GPA (k = 33, N = 9,243, p = 0.41). These relationships make class attendance a better predictor of college grades than any other known predictor of…

Critical thinking (CT), or the ability to engage in purposeful, self-regulatory judgment, is widely recognized as an important, even essential, skill. This article describes an ongoing meta-analysis that summarizes the available empirical evidence on the impact of instruction on the development and enhancement of critical thinking skills and…

Researchers have examined inductive reasoning to identify different cognitive processes when participants deal with inductive problems. This article presents a prescriptive theory of inductive reasoning that identifies cognitive processing using a procedural strategy for making comparisons. It is hypothesized that training in the use of the…