For nearly four decades, research has documented positive correlations between metacognitive abilities and student growth. Teachers who wish to cultivate metacognitive thinking should encourage their students to plan, investigate, and expand on the concepts they learn in class (Fisher, Frey, & Hattie, 2016; Flavell, 1979). This mixed-methods…

We investigated what a cognitive framework for measuring classroom teaching could reveal about (a) the impact of a professional development (PD) program on teaching practices and (b) the relationship between teaching practices and student science learning. To conduct this study, we leveraged a collaboration between two entirely independent…

This study examined the application of Lesson Study for professional development (PD) for a domain approach to moral education. A comparison was drawn between the effects of Lesson Study with 17 teachers and 144 students representing middle schools in the same district as a prior study employing intensive traditional PD. In Lesson Study, groups of…

Introductory science, math, and engineering courses often have problems related to student engagement, achievement, and course completion. To begin examining these issues in greater depth, this pilot study compared student engagement, achievement, and course completion in a small and large section of an introductory biology class. Results based on…

As advanced technology increasingly infiltrated into classroom, the flipped classroom has come to light in secondary educational settings. The flipped classroom is a new instructional approach that intends to flip the traditional teacher-centered classroom into student centered. The purpose of this research is to investigate the impact of the…

We examine improvements in financial knowledge for 8th-grade participants in our financial fitness camp, part of our multifaceted financial literacy program. Eighty-three students enrolled in the camp, and 59 had individual development accounts (IDA). We address several issues raised in the literature by focusing on low-income, predominantly…

The purpose of this replication study was to examine the impact of the Teacher Study Group (TSG) professional development in vocabulary on first-grade teachers' knowledge of vocabulary instruction and observed teaching practice, and on students' vocabulary knowledge. Sixty-two schools from 16 districts in four states were randomly assigned to…

The study abroad (SA) context is often assumed to foster pragmatic development in a second language (L2), yet previous scholarship confirms that pragmatic norms are culturally-shaped and often remain imperceptible to uninstructed SA students (Bataller, 2010; Cohen & Shively, 2007; Shively, 2010). Because pragmatics is not traditionally taught…

This paper investigates the effect of daily journal writing on enhancing the listening and reading comprehension skills in a fifty-week Modern Standard Arabic course taught at the Defense Language Institute (DLI) in Monterey, California. In the field of foreign language (FL) teaching, writing has long been considered a supporting skill for…

In 4 experiments, participants viewed a short video-based lesson about how the Doppler effect works. Some students viewed already-drawn diagrams while listening to a concurrent oral explanation, whereas other students listened to the same explanation while viewing the instructor actually draw the diagrams by hand. All students then completed…

Flipped classrooms have the potential to improve student learning and metacognitive skills as a result of increased time for active learning and group work and student control over pacing, when compared with traditional lecture-based courses. We are currently running a 4-year controlled study to examine the impact of flipping an Introductory…

How can children's natural perceptuo-motor skills be harnessed for teaching and learning mathematical structure? We address this question in the case of the integers. Existing research suggests that adult mental representations of integers recruit perceptuo-motor functionalities involving symmetry. Building on these findings, we designed a…

We describe the development and initial evaluation of the efficacy of "We Have Skills!" (WHS), a video-based social skills instructional program for early elementary school students. The components of WHS were designed to be scientifically sound, maximally useful to elementary school teachers, and effective in increasing students' social…

The MIND Research Institute contracted with the Evaluation Research Program at WestEd to conduct an independent assessment of mathematics outcomes in elementary school grades across California that were provided with the ST Math program. Spatial-Temporal (ST) Math is a game-based instructional software designed to boost K-5 and secondary-level…

College students ("n" = 846) enrolled in a general education course were randomly assigned to either an arousal (experimental) or no-arousal (control) group. The experimental group was exposed to a topic-relevant, 90-second external stimulus (a technique used to elevate arousal and focus attention). The control group listened to the…