Feedback can be defined by Irons (2008) as "any information, process or activity which affords or accelerates student learning based on comments relating to either formative or summative assessment activities" (p. 7). The current study aims to synthesize quantitative research studies to further explore the impact of feedback on academic…

Social stories play a significant part in the teaching skills and behaviors to children with ASD who lack social skills. The purpose of this study is to analyze studies in which social stories were used for teaching social skills to individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). The present study includes a descriptive review and meta-analysis…

The authors describe principles of good teaching drawn from meta-analyses of research on teaching effectiveness. Recent developments in neurobiology are presented and aligned to provide biological support for these principles. To make it easier for college faculty to try out sample instructional strategies, the authors map principles of good…

The authors completed a narrative review of studies of mathematics interventions from 1996 to 2010 for helping elementary school students with difficulties in mathematics solve word problems. Key instructional components supported by research are teaching cognitive and metacognitive skills; schema-based instruction focusing on semantic analysis,…

The critical issue in special education today is no longer the assurance of access, but rather, the assurance of effectiveness. Determining which practices and interventions are most effective and efficient for ensuring optimal student achievement is a fundamental concern of special education teachers in this era of accountability. In this…

The Effective Instructional Strategies Series is a collection of six booklets based on the components used in Pacific Communities with High-performance In Literacy Development (Pacific CHILD), a principles-based professional development program consisting of research-based teaching and learning strategies proven to help improve students' reading…

Reading is critical to students' success in and out of school. One potential means for improving students' reading is writing. In this meta-analysis of true and quasi-experiments, Graham and Herbert present evidence that writing about material read improves students' comprehension of it; that teaching students how to write improves their reading…

Service-learning (SL) has become a popular teaching method everywhere from elementary schools to colleges. Despite the increased presence of SL in the education world, it is still unclear what student outcomes are associated with SL programs and what factors are related to more effective programs. A meta-analysis of 62 studies involving 11,837…

Purpose: The current literature examining the design of effective online learning opportunities recommends an array of best practices but no agreed upon and unifying model. The purpose of this paper is to survey the existing research of effective design models for online learning in an attempt to identify best practices and present a new model.…

During this decade there have been numerous efforts to identify instructional practices that improve students' writing. These include "Reading Next" (Biancarosa and Snow, 2004), which provided a set of instructional recommendations for improving writing, and "Writing Next" (Graham and Perin, 2007) and "Writing to Read" (Graham and Hebert, 2010),…

The last decades have seen increased emphasis on the quality of training for direct-care staff serving people with intellectual disabilities. Nevertheless, it is unclear what the key aspects of effective training are. Therefore, the aim of the present meta-analysis was to establish the ingredients (i.e., goals, format, and techniques) for staff…

This article systematically reviews research on the achievement outcomes of four types of approaches to improving the reading success of children in the elementary grades: reading curricula, instructional technology, instructional process programs, and combinations of curricula and instructional process. Study inclusion criteria included use of…

This report systematically reviews research on the outcomes of programs that teach young children in a group setting before they begin kindergarten. Study inclusion criteria included the use of randomized or matched control groups, evidence of initial equality, and study duration of at least 12 weeks. Studies included valid measures of language,…

This article systematically reviews research on the achievement outcomes of four types of approaches to improving the beginning reading success of children in kindergarten and first grade: Reading curricula, instructional technology, instructional process programs, and combinations of curricula and instructional process. Study inclusion criteria…

This article reviews research on the achievement outcomes of alternative approaches for struggling readers in grades K-5: One-to-one tutoring, small group tutorials, classroom instructional process approaches, and computer-assisted instruction. Study inclusion criteria included use of randomized or well-matched control groups, study duration of at…