A meta-analysis examines studies concerned with the effects of vocabulary instruction on the learning of word meanings and on comprehension. It is concluded that vocabulary instruction has a significant effect on the comprehension of passages containing taught words, but significant effects are not found with all teaching methods. (Author/LMO)

This book presents a description of Direct Instruction and a meta-analysis of research on Direct Instruction. The term "Direct Instruction" as used in the book refers to instructional programs developed by Siegfried Englemann and his colleagues, including DISTAR (Direct instruction System for Teaching Arithmetic and Reading) and DISTAR…

A synthesis of research on interventions designed to build reading fluency in students with learning disabilities identified 24 studies on various interventions. Results suggested that effective interventions include explicit models of reading fluency, multiple opportunities to read familiar text repeatedly, independently, and with corrective…

Experimental studies based on the Dunn and Dunn Learning Style Model (conducted between 1980-1990) were identified to determine the value of teaching students through their learning style preferences. Meta-analysis determined that matching students' learning style preferences with educational interventions compatible with those preferences is…

A meta-analysis including 96 experimental studies considers the effects of reinforcement/reward on intrinsic motivation. Results indicate that reward does not decrease intrinsic motivation, although interaction effects must be examined. An analysis with five studies also indicates that reinforcement does not harm intrinsic motivation. (SLD)

This study used meta-analyses to evaluate the relative effectiveness of a variety of educational interventions with students who have disabilities. A graph of average effect sizes for 18 interventions shows the demonstrated effectiveness of mnemonic training, reading comprehension instruction, behavior modification, direct instruction,…

This critical review examines 10 controlled studies in which traditional operant behavioral procedures were compared with normalized interventions for teaching language to young children with autism. It concluded that normalized language training was substantially more effective than discrete-trial training and yielded more positive parental…

When the editors of The Voice of Evidence in Reading Research, Ms. McCardle and Ms. Chhabra, decided to edit a book and to invite authors to contribute to it, they wanted it to be a book for teachers. As stated in the first chapter, their motivation was to empower teachers to judge research worthiness for themselves. They feel that it is important…

Having facilitated, read, and collected more than 200 teacher research pieces written by prospective and practicing teachers, the authors conducted a systematic analysis of the domains and contents of teachers' questions as they embarked on their first research study. Focusing on the questions teachers ask led to the generation of a typology of…

Recent meta-analyses and other studies of media's influence on learning are reviewed. Consistent evidence is found for the generalization that there are no learning benefits to be gained from employing any specific medium to deliver instruction. Problems and suggestions concerning current media attribute and symbol system theories are described.…

This study explored whether university students' perceptions of the social environment are influenced by professors' classroom teaching innovations. Data from 559 university students in 13 innovative disciplines within 11 schools at the University of Seville, Spain, were used. First, factor analytic procedures with varimax rotation were used to…

This paper reviews 31 studies which directly compared two or more instructional strategies used with students who display moderate to severe handicaps. The efficiency and effectiveness of 13 strategies are reported, including error manipulation strategies, response prompting strategies, naturalistic teaching strategies, and stimulus modification…

This response to an article by Karen Tateyama-Sniezek (EC 230 117), which examined the effectiveness of cooperative learning with mildly disabled students, reconsiders a table by adding more comparison statistics, effect sizes, and standard individual measures of achievement. Noted are the scarcity of studies including individual accountability…

A meta-analysis of 21 instructional treatments aimed at enhancing the skill of deliberately deriving word meaning from context during reading shows a medium effect size of 0.43 standard deviation units. Exploratory multilevel regression shows that clue instruction appears more effective than other instruction types or practice alone. (Author/SLD)

Instructional components that positively influence performance of adolescents with learning disabilities are identified based on a comprehensive meta-analysis of 913 intervention studies for students with learning disabilities. Explicit practice and advanced organization are basic instructional components in a number of successful intervention…