Play is an essential component of childhood, but parents and educators sometimes view it as an optional add-on, which gets in the way of learning. This view persists in spite of evidence that play is helpful and sometimes critical to learning in multiple domains, perhaps because precise mechanisms whereby play occasions learning are not well…

Despite its name, associative recognition is a paradigm thought to rely on memory recall. However, it remains unclear how associative information may be represented and retrieved from memory and what its relationship to other information, such as item memory, is. Here, we propose a computational model of associative recognition, where relational…

In carrying out surveys involving sensitive characteristics, randomized response models have been considered among the best techniques since they provide the maximum privacy protection to the respondents and procure honest responses. Over the years, researchers have carried out studies on the estimation of proportions of the population possessing…

Estimation of within-trial interactions in meta-analysis is crucial for reliable assessment of how treatment effects vary across participant subgroups. However, current methods have various limitations. Patients, clinicians and policy-makers need reliable estimates of treatment effects within specific covariate subgroups, on relative and absolute…

This article develops new closed-form variance expressions for power analyses for commonly used difference-in-differences (DID) and comparative interrupted time series (CITS) panel data estimators. The main contribution is to incorporate variation in treatment timing into the analysis. The power formulas also account for other key design features…

The theatrical heritage of Jan Amos Comenius (1592-1670), the famous Czech teacher, religious thinker, and playwright, has been for a long time underestimated. There is little research on this topic. However, theatre played a very important role within the Pansophic school. The method of theatralisation was not new, but in the age of Comenius it…

Theory of mind (ToM) is a key social-cognitive skill that allows individuals to understand and attribute mental states to others; it facilitates relationships and helps individuals navigate the social world. Thus, it is likely influenced by social and cultural contexts. In this article, we review studies that examine the potential ways through…

"Representational transformation diagrams" are used to compare and contrast standard textbook presentations of vector line integrals in undergraduate courses in both mathematics and physics. These presentations are taken as the lower anchor in a learning trajectory. Two principal approaches in the lower division are identified, roughly…

Sound educational policy recommendations require valid estimates of causal effects, but observational studies in physics education research sometimes have loosely specified causal hypotheses. The connections between the observational data and the explicit or implicit causal conclusions are sometimes misstated. The link between the causal…

Applying qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) to large Ns relaxes researchers' case-based knowledge. This is problematic because causality in QCA is inferred from a dialogue between empirical, theoretical, and case-based knowledge. The lack of case-based knowledge may be remedied by various robustness tests. However, being a case-based method,…

Basic knowledge of ideas of causal inference can help students to think beyond data, that is, to think more clearly about the data generating process. Especially for (maybe big) observational data, qualitative assumptions are important for the conclusions drawn and interpretation of the quantitative results. Concepts of causal inference can also…

This article discusses the internationalization capacity building project at the Karaganda Technical University ('KTU') in Kazakhstan. The project, entitled "Capacity building for the internationalization of a technical university by means of digital learning technologies," was supported by the fund "Scientific foundations…

Meta-analyses are often used to synthesize the findings of studies examining the correlational relationship between two continuous variables. When only dichotomous measurements are available for one of the two variables, the biserial correlation coefficient can be used to estimate the product-moment correlation between the two underlying…

This article explores the current state and new roles of physical education as liberal education (PELE) in higher education. Recently, there has been growing discontent with PELE due to program redundancy and lack of educational power in higher education. However, little attention has been given to how to reconstruct PELE in higher education. To…

The choice of anchor tests is crucial in applications of the nonequivalent groups with anchor test design of equating. Sinharay and Holland (2006, 2007) suggested "miditests," which are anchor tests that are content-representative and have the same mean item difficulty as the total test but have a smaller spread of item difficulties.…