Over the last decade, a wealth of empirical evidence has accumulated describing the merits of team-based, collaborative, and interdisciplinary research, including: increased productivity among researchers, greater citation impact, increased multi-sector engagement, and the generation of novel solutions to grand challenges. Funding agencies have…

Discipline-based education researchers have a natural laboratory--classrooms, programs, colleges, and universities. Studies that administer treatments to multiple sections, in multiple years, or at multiple institutions are particularly compelling for two reasons: first, the sample sizes increase, and second, the implementation of the treatments…

Suppose an education researcher wants to test the impact of a high school drop-out prevention intervention in which at-risk students attend classes to receive intensive summer school instruction. The district will allow the researcher to randomly assign students to the treatment classes or to the control group. Half of the students (the treatment…

In education, most naturally occurring data are clustered within contexts. Students are clustered within classrooms, classrooms are clustered within schools, and schools are clustered within districts. When people are clustered within naturally occurring organizational units such as schools, classrooms, or districts, the responses of people from…

Today's classrooms increasingly challenge teachers to address a diverse range of backgrounds, abilities, and learning needs. As teachers rise to the challenge, grouping can be a valuable instructional tool to address varying ability levels and learning needs within the classroom. At present, there is a good deal of support in the literature for…