Background/Context: In meta-analysis examining educational intervention, characterizing heterogeneity and exploring the sources of variation in synthesized effects have become increasingly prominent areas of interest. When combining results from a collection of studies, statistical dependency among their effects size estimates will arise when a…

Background: The education and training of coaches is considered central to maintaining and improving the quality of coaching. Formal coach education is accessed by thousands of coaches each year. However, evidence would suggest this form of learning plays only a minor role in coaches' development. One possible reason for this is the lack of…

The current best evidence meta-analysis reanalyzed the data from a meta-analysis by Graham et al. (J Educ Psychol 115:1004-1027, 2023). This meta-analysis and the prior one examined if teaching writing improved the writing of students in Grades 6 to 12, examining effects from writing intervention studies employing experimental and…

Recently, there has been a growing interest in the potential of virtual reality-based teacher training (VRBTT). Despite this surge, the impact of VRBTT on teacher training outcomes remains unclear and cannot be generalized from generic VR-based training approaches. This study aimed to evaluate the overall effects of VRBTT and explore potentially…

Background: A systematic review is a type of literature review that uses rigorous methods to synthesize evidence from multiple studies on a specific topic. It is widely used in academia, including medical and social science research. Social science is an academic discipline that focuses on human behaviour and society. However, consensus regarding…

Research has suggested that teacher educators' profession and the process of identity formation are poorly understood. Moreover, attempts to clarify the terminology are rare. While research has addressed teacher educators' professional identities holistically, discussion on teacher educators' teacher identities is very rare, even though these…

As a measure of heterogeneity in meta-analysis, the coefficient of variation (CV) has been recently considered, providing researchers with a complement to the very popular I[superscript 2] measure. While I[superscript 2] measures the proportion of total variance that is due to variance of the random effects, the CV is the ratio of the standard…

The variance-stabilizing Freeman-Tukey double arcsine transform was originally proposed for inference on single proportions. Subsequently, its use has been suggested in the context of meta-analysis of proportions. While some erratic behavior has been observed previously, here we point out and illustrate general issues of monotonicity and…

The meta-analytic-predictive (MAP) approach is a Bayesian meta-analytic method to synthesize and incorporate information from historical controls in the analysis of a new trial. Classically, only a single parameter, typically the intercept or rate, is assumed to vary across studies, which may not be realistic in more complex models. Analysis of…

Plenty of research has been carried out in order to determine the effect of gamification on learner motivation. The purpose of this study was to combine the experimental research results examining the effect of gamification on learner motivation and conducted between the years of 2010-2017 through a meta-analysis. The random effects model was used…

Diffraction has emerged as a concept and methodology through opposing reflexivity. In this paper, I argue that reflexivity and diffraction are not external to each other. In contrast, I propose that they blur into each other and so we do not find ourselves using pure reflexivity or diffraction. Furthermore, I contend that categorically…

Publication bias is a ubiquitous threat to the validity of meta-analysis and the accumulation of scientific evidence. In order to estimate and counteract the impact of publication bias, multiple methods have been developed; however, recent simulation studies have shown the methods' performance to depend on the true data generating process, and no…

Academic identity refers to the experiences, ideas, beliefs and values of academics regarding the core values and principles of academic work. It is significant in defining the professional judgments, attitudes and behaviours of academics, and is fundamentally (re)constituted in the social, economic, cultural and political context of the academy.…

Pedagogical agents are virtual characters that instructional designers include in learning environments to help students learn. Research in the area has flourished for thirty years, yet there are still critical questions about the efficacy of pedagogical agents for influencing learning and affect. As such, we conducted an umbrella review to…

The concept of distributed pedagogical leadership (DPL) practice in education is advanced as an acceptable element in enhancing the quality of pedagogical improvement and the academic achievement of learners across educational contexts. This concept is conceived as a leadership style, where stakeholders are formally and informally involved in the…