Prior research in higher education shows that engagement has been inconsistently conceptualized: semantic inconsistency has been compounded by variations in the constructs used to operationalize engagement. Acknowledging these limitations, we conceptualize student engagement as a multi-faceted meta-construct, overcoming some of the limitations…

A scale-up study in education typically expands the sample of students, schools, districts, and/or practices or materials used in smaller studies in ways that build in heterogeneity. Yet surprisingly little is known about the factors that promote successful scaling up efforts in education, in large part due to the absence of empirically supported…

Assessments in response formats with ordered categories are ubiquitous in the social and health sciences. Although the assumption that the ordering of the categories is working as intended is central to any interpretation that arises from such assessments, testing that this assumption is valid is not standard in psychometrics. This is surprising…

In the present study, a mobile learning system for the professional development of academics was developed by design based action research, and the perceptions and experiences of the academics using this system were examined. In the first phase of this design-based action research, the research question was defined. In the second phase, a…

Multisite trials, in which individuals are randomly assigned to alternative treatment arms within sites, offer an excellent opportunity to estimate the cross-site average effect of treatment assignment (intent to treat or ITT) "and" the amount by which this impact varies across sites. Although both of these statistics are substantively…

A multiple baseline design across participants was used to examine the effects of a portable video modeling intervention delivered in the natural environment on the verbal compliments and compliment gestures demonstrated by five children with autism. Participants were observed playing kickball with peers and adults. In baseline, participants…

Experimental and quasi-experimental designs are used in educational research to establish causality and develop effective practices. These research designs rely on a counterfactual model that, in simple form, calls for a comparison between a treatment group and a control group. Developers of educational practices often assume that the population…

This article describes a predictive model that assesses whether a student will have greater perceived learning in group assignments or in individual work. The model produces correct classifications 87.5% of the time. The research is notable in that it is the first in the education literature to adopt a predictive modeling methodology using data…

In a randomized controlled trial, a decision needs to be made about the total number of subjects for adequate statistical power. One way to increase the power of a trial is by including a predictive covariate in the model. In this article, the effects of various covariate adjustment strategies on increasing the power is studied for discrete-time…

The concept of bidirectionality represents a process of mutual influence between parent and child, whereby each influences the other as well as the dyadic relationship. Despite the widespread acceptance of bidirectional models of influence, there is still a lack of integration of such models in current research designs. Research on…

Current initiatives in education, such as No Child Left Behind and the National Common Core Standards movement, call for the use of evidence-based practices, or those instructional practices that are supported by documentation of their effectiveness related to student learning outcomes, including students with special needs. While hearing loss is…

Many important educational situations such as traumatic brain injury among preschoolers, school gun violence, preadolescent eating disorders, and adolescent suicide happen relatively infrequently. In this article, the authors explain why mixed methods research designs offer more meaningful empirical results than do qualitative or quantitative…

It is known that visual working memory capacity is limited, but the nature of this limit remains a subject of controversy. Increasingly, two factors are thought to limit visual memory: an object-based limit associated with so-called "slots" models, and an information-based limit associated with resource models. Recently, Barton, Ester, and Awh…

This article reports on a design-based methodology of a thesis in which a fully face-to-face contact module was converted into a blended learning course. The purpose of the article is to report on how design-based phases, in the form of micro-, meso- and macro-cycles were applied to improve practice and to generate design principles. Design-based…

This article describes experiences with a qualitative research project into teachers' learning from innovating their own educational practices. Decades of New Public Management (NPM) in the Netherlands, with its top-down and businesslike approach to areas of public interest, obscured the learning and innovating capacity of teachers, teams, and…