In studies of educational achievement, students' self-reported number of books in the family home is a frequently used proxy for social, cultural, and economic background. Absent hard evidence about what this variable captures or how well, its use has been motivated by strong associations with student outcomes. I show that these associations rest…

The purpose of this paper is to describe best practices in designing and implementing strong quasi-experimental designs (QED) when assessing the effectiveness of policies, programs or practices. The paper first discusses the issues researchers face when choosing to conduct a QED, as opposed to a more rigorous randomized controlled trial design.…

In response to questions in which a "wh"-term interacts with a universal quantifier in object position, such as "Who picked every toy?," children as old as 5 years of age often provide a list, pairing toys with the people who picked each of them. This response pattern is unexpected, it has been claimed, because children appear…

Poor quality early childhood education and care (ECEC) can be detrimental to the development of children as it could lead to poor social, emotional, educational, health, economic, and behavioural outcomes. The lack of consensus as to the strength of the relationship between teacher qualification and the quality of the early childhood learning…

The globalization of economic activities progresses worldwide. The internationalization of higher education institutions is required to adapt itself to the situation. Particularly, the top universities of each country are expected to produce very significant research achievements and to recruit and educate excellent students from all over the…

Previously we showed how we measured pedagogy and revealed its association with learning outcomes of sixth-form college mathematics students. In this project we followed a similar approach to the study of university transition. We particularly sought to identify the students' perceptions of the transitional experience, and measure the association…

The "School Violence Survey" (SVS) was developed as an instrument to investigate students' perceptions of school environment, their experiences and interactions within diverse social groups, and their views on school violence issues including bullying. A total of 806 students across four Midwest high schools and middle schools completed…

This study examined motivational strategies and utilisation of Internet resources as determinants of research productivity of lecturers in universities of agriculture in Nigeria. One thousand, one hundred and thirty two (1,132) copies of the questionnaire were administered on the lecturers in universities of agriculture in Nigeria. Eight hundred…

The present study aimed to identify and interpret concerns of the new faculty members in Jordanian universities. A total of 336 new faculty members who participated in this study were asked to rate their perceptions of issues related to teaching, research, service, balancing work and home life and the academic culture of their workplace. Means and…

This article reports findings from a "meta-review" and synthesis of research on variables related to learning, including both cognitive and affective schooling outcomes. Results confirm that distal policy variables are less important to schooling outcomes than quantity and quality of instruction, home environment, or student characteristics. (IAH)

The purpose of this study was to assess the presence and/or implementation of Special Education activities within charter schools by questioning principals about the presence of children with disabilities in their schools, types of services provided in the charter schools, and the beliefs and attitudes of the principals regarding Special Education…