Context: Assessments of baseline equivalency of intervention and control groups, "balance," play a critical role in evaluating educational interventions. The highest What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) of the Institute of Educational Studies (IES) standard for educational studies, "Meets WWC Design Standards Without Reservations,"…

The purpose of this analysis was to assess whether effects of first-grade mathematics intervention apply across the range of at-risk learners' initial skill levels. Students were randomly assigned to control (n = 213) and two variants of intervention (n = 385) designed to improve arithmetic. Of each 30-minute intervention session (48 over 16…

I conducted 2 experiments to analyze the effects of a reading curriculum, "Corrective Reading," which has a sequence that trains derived relations, on the emission of (a) derived relations defined as combinatorial entailment in Relational Frame Theory and (b) metaphors with first grade students. In Experiment 1, I compared the…

Central coherence is the ability to perceive and connect salient information in a context such as a narrative text. Weak central coherence theory describes a detail-focused cognitive style of processing information that overlooks connections. This style of processing is a shortcoming of individuals with autism compared to typically developing…

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether a Chinese phonetic script, Zhu-Yin-Fu-Hao (ZYFH), influences low achievers in learning Chinese. In this quasi experimental design, 21 students were assigned to the experimental group, while the other 31 students were distributed to the control group. Two interventions were implemented throughout…

The purpose of this study was to examine the relative effectiveness of two computer supported approaches to teaching beginning reading skills that differed in important aspects of their instructional approach and emphasis. One of the programs was "Auditory Discrimination in Depth," which provides very explicit instruction and practice in…

We examined the effects of transcription instruction for students in 1st grade. We selected students in the lowest 70% of the participating schools for the study. We randomly assigned these 81 students to (a) spelling instruction, (b) handwriting instruction, (c) combination spelling and handwriting instruction, or (d) no intervention.…

Positive friendships have been related to decreasing levels of children's physical aggression over time. While this evidence calls for interventions aimed at helping children build good-quality friendships, tests of causality through experimental manipulations are still needed. The goal of this study was to examine whether an intervention aimed to…

This preliminary research examined the effectiveness of a classroom counseling intervention on student self-efficacy development. Five first-grade classrooms in a rural school with high rates of economic disparity were randomly assigned to either a set of 12 specialized lessons emphasizing self-efficacy or lessons from the existing core…

This report presents the SPARK literacy model, an innovative approach developed by Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Milwaukee, for addressing the literacy needs of low-income and minority schools in Milwaukee. It also presents the results of a two-year randomized control trial evaluation of the SPARK literacy program's impact on reading…

Executive function (EF) describes a complex set of skills, including flexible attention, inhibitory control, and working memory, that coordinate to achieve behavioral regulation. Visuospatial skills (VS) describe the capacity to visually perceive and understand spatial relationships among objects. Emerging research suggests VS skills are…

The purpose of this closely aligned conceptual replication study was to investigate the efficacy of a Tier 2 kindergarten mathematics intervention. The replication study differed from the initial randomized controlled trial on three important elements: geographical region, timing of the intervention, and instructional context of the…

The purpose of this closely aligned conceptual replication study was to investigate the efficacy of a Tier 2 kindergarten mathematics intervention. The replication study differed from the initial randomized controlled trial on three important elements: geographical region, timing of the intervention, and instructional context of the…

The author defends the claim, based on her experience as a teacher in the Foundation Phase as well as on her experience as the educator of student teachers in this Phase, that a specially constructed intervention programme will improve Grade 1's learning in several key areas. She firstly show that such a programme is required, given the current…

There has been a drastic increase in the use of technology in the classroom over the past 20 years. As computers and tablets permeate our schools, their presence is oftentimes seen as a cure to whatever problems may exist. While the promise of technology has held true within some domains, little has been done to examine its efficacy in some areas.…