A recent article in this journal claims that the simple view of reading represents a long-outdated account of what underlies the ability to read. Its authors argue that if teachers are to be better informed about what is known about reading then the simple view must be replaced by a more current model, one that captures the substantial progress…

The objective of this paper is to comment on the think-aloud methods presented in the three papers included in this special issue. The commentary offered stems from the author's own psychological investigations of unobservable information processes and the conditions under which the most defensible claims can be advanced. The structure of this…

McGrath presents a prototyping proposal to better classify character education programs. He proposes 7 key elements that can facilitate identifying more and less typical programs. This proposal appears to be a very good start for improving the organization of the character education field and facilitating research. This commentary highlights 4…

In 2009, Markus Montola, Jaakko Stenros, and Annika Waern published "Pervasive Games: Theory and Design," based on research conducted during the Integrated Project on Pervasive Games (IPerG) and funded by the European Union (E.U.) from 2005 to 2008. They wrote it--the first book-length treatise on the topic--before the widespread use of…

Virtual learning environments (VLEs) are increasingly used at-scale in educational contexts to facilitate teaching and promote learning, and the data they produce can be used for educational research purposes. Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Educational Technology has repeatedly emphasized the importance of using evidence…

Virtual learning environments (VLE) are increasingly used at-scale in educational contexts to facilitate teaching and promote learning, and the data they produce can be used for educational research purposes. Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Educational Technology has repeatedly emphasized the importance of using evidence to…

The goal of this special issue is to examine the use of self-report measures in the study of motivation and strategy use. This commentary reviews the articles contained in this special issue to address the primary objective of determining if and when self-report measures contribute to understanding these major constructs involved in self-regulated…

In this contribution, I argue for a radical reappraisal of accepted ideas about how English is taught and tested. I am not alone in questioning the validity of the current orthodoxy. Others have expressed views that correspond or are consistent with the points I make here. What I have sought to do is to synthesize them in the formulation of a…

This commentary discusses the issue of small samples in instructed second language acquisition research. We discuss the current state of affairs, and consider the disadvantages of small samples. We also explore other considerations regarding sample size, such as research ethics and ecological validity. We present a range of recommendations for…

Self-report is required to assess mental states in nuanced ways. By implication, self-report is indispensable to capture the psychological processes driving human learning, such as learners' emotions, motivation, strategy use, and metacognition. As shown in the contributions to this special issue, self-report related to learning shows convergent…

Purpose: This article outlines the experience of conducting Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis research into the chronic illness of Inflammatory Bowel Disease, an incurable condition of the gastro-intestinal tract which results in numerous physically and psychologically symptoms that are difficult to live with, by a researcher who shares the…

Randomized controlled trials are a special case of designs using an unbiased instrument to take care of confounders even if they are unmeasured or unknown. Another example of studies using instrumental variables is the Mendelian experiment and Directed Acyclic Graphs show the power of such designs to enhance the internal validity. It is argued…

Hinterecker, Knauff, and Johnson-Laird (2016) compared the adequacy of the probabilistic new paradigm in reasoning with the recent revision of mental models theory (MMT) for explaining a novel class of inferences containing the modal term "possibly." For example, "the door is closed or the window is open or both," therefore,…

In this commentary we first examine psychometric issues in the ambitious enterprise of cross-cultural application of the Parental Burnout Assessment (PBA). The present reports span a wide range of cultural places. Overall, the PBA presents good face validity and a strong replication of factor structure; future multi-group confirmatory factor…

Maul's paper, "Rethinking Traditional Methods of Survey Validation" (Andrew Maul), contains two stages. First he presents empirical results that cast doubt on traditional methods for validating psychological measurement instruments. These results motivate the second stage, a critique of current conceptions of psychological measurement…