Considerable research has examined the prevalence and apparent consequences of task-unrelated thoughts (TUTs) in both laboratory and authentic educational settings. Few studies, however, have explored methods to reduce TUTs during learning; those few studies tested small samples or used unvalidated TUT assessments. The present experimental study…

Analyzing heterogeneous treatment effects (HTEs) plays a crucial role in understanding the impacts of educational interventions. A standard practice for HTE analysis is to examine interactions between treatment status and preintervention participant characteristics, such as pretest scores, to identify how different groups respond to treatment.…

Analyzing heterogeneous treatment effects (HTE) plays a crucial role in understanding the impacts of educational interventions. A standard practice for HTE analysis is to examine interactions between treatment status and pre-intervention participant characteristics, such as pretest scores, to identify how different groups respond to treatment.…

We designed and implemented a modified eight-week Direct Instruction (DI) program intended to teach a third grade student with learning disabilities to tell time. The first objective was to determine whether or not the appearance (interesting or boring) of the worksheet affected performance. These data suggested the use of large-scale clocks and…

Interim assessments are increasingly common in U.S. schools. We use high-quality data from a large-scale school-level cluster randomized experiment to examine the impact of two well-known commercial interim assessment programs on mathematics and reading achievement in Indiana. Results indicate that the treatment effects are positive but not…

The purpose of the present study was to examine a common practice in some areas of program evaluation, the retrospective pretest, and to present recommendations regarding its use. The authors review literature to emphasize first, that bias is likely in both prospective and retrospective ratings, and second, that under some circumstances,…