The set of appendices in this volume is a companion to the report "Federal Efforts Towards Investing in Innovation in Education Through the i3 Fund: A Summary of Grantmaking and Evidence-Building." The goal of the U.S. Department of Education's Investing in Innovation Fund (i3) was to build high-quality evidence about effective…

This article describes a teaching innovation that focused on the redesign of an undergraduate social work research class. Students enrolled in the redesigned class had an opportunity to conduct program evaluation projects in community agencies. The projects included (a) pretest and posttest evaluation of reminiscence approach in improving the…

Spurred by a demand to prepare more American workers for middle-class jobs in high technology industries, funders are investing aggressively in large-scale partnerships between community college workforce educators and employers. Despite such investments, however, few broadly usable insights have been gleaned about effective partnership and…

Whole-school or whole-class programs designed to promote positive behavior can enhance the likelihood that effective teaching and learning occur for all students. This practice guide is intended to help elementary education educators, as well as school and district administrators and parents, implement and support effective prevention-focused…

The practice of homeschooling still receives contrasting responses on its relevancy and effectiveness. The current study is aimed to map the trends in the selected eleven studies from various educational journals. The analysis focuses on mapping the trends on: a) research settings, b) target sample, c) method or instrument used, d) common focus or…

This paper presents findings from a collaborative evaluation project within a masters programme in professional education. The project aimed to increase knowledge of research methodologies and methods through authentic learning where participants worked in partnership with the tutor to evaluate the module which they were studying. The project…

hapTEL, an interdisciplinary project funded by two UK research councils from 2007 to 2011, involves a large interdisciplinary team (with undergraduate and post-graduate student participants) which has been developing and evaluating a virtual learning system within an HE healthcare education setting, working on three overlapping strands. Strand 1…

Purpose: The use of e-learning is largely predicated upon the assumption that it can facilitate improvements in student learning and therefore can be more effective than conventional techniques. This assumption has been supported by some in the literature but has been questioned by a continuing body of contrary or indifferent evidence. The purpose…

This report presents findings from a rigorous evaluation of the Early Start to Emancipation Preparation (ESTEP)-Tutoring Program in Los Angeles. ESTEP-Tutoring provides up to 50 hours of remedial one-on-one tutoring in reading and math to foster youths ages 14 to 15 who are one to three years behind grade level in either reading or math. The…

This paper reports a systematic review of the quasi-experimental literature in the field of adult literacy and numeracy, published between 1980 and 2002. We included 27 controlled trials (CTs) that evaluated strategies and pedagogies designed to increase adult literacy and numeracy: 18 CTs with no effect sizes (incomplete data) and 9 CTs with full…

In the digital era online tutorials remain especially popular for providing information literacy instruction to undergraduates. This paper provides three approaches for assessing learning from a web-based tutorial. First, a general assessment focuses on patron surveys, usage statistics, and interlibrary loan requests for library-owned materials to…

This article describes conceptual and methodological limitations of existing research on the efficacy of early intervention programs. Recent studies using meta-analytic techniques to generate testable hypotheses are reviewed. Recommendations for greater precision in measurement and for improved research design are offered. (DB)

Calls for carefully executed research that explores the impact of instructional practices on learning outcomes. Discusses considerations relevant to selecting the outcome measures (including types of outcomes, longitudinal effects, and "real world" impact). Urges caution in designing such research to ensure its internal validity and external…

This paper is an attempt to organize the many loosely connected efforts to develop psychology-referenced assessments, focusing on the development of assessments to guide specific instructional decisions, sometimes referred to as diagnostic assessments. Many of the arguments apply to program evaluation as well, because assessments that reveal the…

The major purpose of this study was to produce a research method for use in studying how the inherent qualities of college courses taken during the teacher education years can be used to predict how practicing elementary teachers may perceive their later teaching proficiencies. The 101 teachers who participated in the study had collectively…