Instrumental variables is a popular approach for causal inference in education when randomization of treatment is not feasible. Using a first-year college program as a running example, this article reviews the five assumptions that must be met to successfully use instrumental variables to estimate a causal effect with observational data: SUTVA,…

Approximately 3-4 boys for every girl meet the clinical criteria for autism in studies of community diagnostic patterns and studies of autism using samples of convenience. However, girls with autism have been hypothesized to be underdiagnosed, possibly because they may present with differing symptom profiles as compared to boys. This secondary…

Developing tailored implementation strategies to increase the use of evidence-based practice (EBP) requires accurate identification of predictors of their use. However, known difficulties with measuring EBP use complicates interpretation of the extant literature. In this proof-of-concept study, we examined whether the same predictors of use of…

The purpose of this preliminary study was to examine the extent to which the relation between teacher reported (N = 26) teaching efficacy and observations of classroom quality varied as a function of a specific classroom characteristic, classroom adversity, a measure of classroom level hardship that includes factors such as student challenges with…

Over the past 20+ years, researchers have worked toward identifying early behavioral predictors of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and developing observation-based screeners to supplement existing parent-report methods. This study is a follow-up, 3 to 8 years later, with parents/caregivers of 57 children previously enrolled in a U.S.…

The speed-accuracy trade-off (SAT) suggests that time constraints reduce response accuracy. Its relevance in observational settings--where response time (RT) may not be constrained but respondent speed may still vary--is unclear. Using 29 data sets containing data from cognitive tasks, we use a flexible method for identification of the SAT (which…

Barriers to identifying autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in young children in a timely manner have led to calls for novel screening and assessment strategies. Combining computational methods with clinical expertise presents an opportunity for identifying patterns within large clinical datasets that can inform new assessment paradigms. The present…

This study applied the Social Cognitive Theory (SCT) to explore the sources of self-efficacy and professional development activities that are most predictive of PreK-6 music teachers' efficacious beliefs. This study also compared teacher efficacy levels across different groups. The target population for this study was PreK-6 music teachers in the…

In this paper, an empirical comparison of three state-of-the-art classifier methods (artificial immune recognition systems, Lazy-K Star, and random tree) to predict teachers' ability to adapt in a classroom environment is carried out. Two educational databases are used for this task. First, measures collected in an academic context, especially…

Adolescents who experience social anxiety often display distressing fears that unfamiliar individuals evaluate their performance in social settings. These fears typically manifest as fears of negative evaluation (FNE) and/or fears of positive evaluation (FPE). Two well-established survey measures were originally developed to assess these…

Noncognitive constructs such as self-efficacy, social awareness, and academic engagement are widely acknowledged as critical components of human capital, but systematic data collection on such skills in school systems is complicated by conceptual ambiguities, measurement challenges and resource constraints. This study addresses this issue by…

Due to the importance of teachers in providing quality education, research in the last two decades has consistently focused on their effectiveness. However, there are inconclusive debates in the literature on the nature of relationships that exist between different supervisory strategies and their links to teachers' job performance. This study…

The move to include students with special educational needs (SEN) in mainstream education is one of the priorities of educational reform agendas in many countries. In Flanders (Belgium) the aim is to implement a more inclusive school system, but it faces resistance from practitioners. The aim of this study is twofold: (1) to compare teachers'…

In their situated expectancy-value theory, Eccles and Wigfield (2020) assume students' competence and value beliefs to be situation-specific and thereby to be "situative" in nature. Even though motivation research has gradually been developing an understanding of this situative nature, for instance, by disentangling time-consistent and…

Given the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to the forced adoption of online teaching in several academic institutions across the world, we set out an objective in this paper to examine salient factors that may affect the decision to use online teaching by faculty members (teaching staff). We propose and validate a model based on an…