The COVID-19 pandemic caused tremendous upheaval in schooling. In addition to devasting effects on students, these disruptions had consequences for researchers conducting studies on education programs and policies. Given the likelihood of future large-scale disruptions, it is important for researchers to plan resilient studies and think critically…

Educational research enquiries differ based on philosophical beliefs and assumptions regarding researchers' explicitly stated views. This paper critically explores the most dominant philosophical stances in social research sciences, namely positivism, interpretivism and pragmatism. It begins with an overview of the role of the aforementioned…

Single-case research design is a useful methodology for evaluating the presence of a functional relation between an intervention and the mathematical performance of students with a learning disability. However, a functional relation cannot be established with threats to internal validity of the design. External validity is impacted if researchers…

Reform efforts in statistics education emphasize the need for students to develop statistical thinking. Critical to this goal is a solid understanding of design in the process of collecting data, evaluating evidence, and drawing conclusions. We collected survey responses from over 700 college students at the start of an introductory statistics…

In this commentary, we complement other constructive critiques of educational randomized control trials (RCTs) by calling attention to the commonly ignored role of context in causal mechanisms undergirding educational phenomena. We argue that evidence for the central role of context in causal mechanisms challenges the assumption that RCT findings…

Findings from experimental studies have increasingly been used to inform policy in school settings. Thus far, the populations in many of these studies are typically defined in a cross-sectional context; namely, the populations are defined in the same academic year in which the study took place or the population is defined at a fixed time point.…

In this article, I comment on the potential benefits and limitations of open science reforms for improving the transparency and accountability of research, and enhancing the credibility of research findings within communities of policy and practice. Specifically, I discuss the role of replication and reproducibility of research in promoting better…

Given the importance of social integration and participation in inclusive settings for young children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), the purpose of this systematic review was to examine instructional outcomes and participant, teacher, group, and instructional characteristics that may be pertinent to successful group instruction for young…

This article enters the debate about the complex and dynamical nature of second language acquisition (SLA) by discussing and commenting on Pallotti's critique of Complex Dynamic Systems Theory (CDST). Pallotti's critique brings to the fore the argument that, due to its anti-reductionist stance, CDST research fails to observe three fundamental…

The scientific rigor of education research has improved dramatically since the year 2000. Much of the credit for this improvement is deserved by Institute of Education Sciences (IES) policies that helped create a demand for rigorous research; increased human capital capacity to carry out such work; provided funding for the work itself; and…

Single-case research methods provide the basis for evaluating effective instructional approaches in special education. The purpose of this article is to provide special educators an overview of single-case research methods, with an emphasis on how these designs are used to establish whether an instructional practice relates to improved learner…

Experimental studies are often employed to test the effectiveness of teaching innovations such as new pedagogy, curriculum, or learning resources. This article offers guidance on good practice in developing research designs, and in drawing conclusions from published reports. Random control trials potentially support the use of statistical…

This article assesses the likely generalizability of educational treatment-effect estimates from regression discontinuity designs (RDDs) when treatment assignment is based on academic pretest scores. Our assessment uses data on outcome and pretest measures from six educational experiments, ranging from preschool through high school, to estimate…

Purpose: Nonexperimental research, defined as any kind of quantitative or qualitative research that is not an experiment, is the predominate kind of research design used in the social sciences. How to unambiguously and correctly present the results of nonexperimental research, however, remains decidedly unclear and possibly detrimental to applied…

Randomized experiments are considered the gold standard for causal inference because they can provide unbiased estimates of treatment effects for the experimental participants. However, researchers and policymakers are often interested in using a specific experiment to inform decisions about other target populations. In education research,…