Optimizing collaborative behavior is crucial in educational activities, directly improving academic performance, social skills, and social-emotional learning for both teachers and students. In an effort to decipher the mechanisms underlying the effectiveness of collaborative learning, educators and neuroscientists have initiated the collection and…

Although quality guidelines for single-case intervention research emphasize the importance of concurrent baselines in multiple-baseline and multiple-probe designs, nonconcurrent variations on these designs persist in the research literature. This study describes a systematic review of special education intervention studies (k = 406) between 1988…

Meta-analyses play an instrumental role in informing second language (L2) theory and practice. However, current (i.e., classic) approaches to meta-analysis are limited in their ability to do so because they often fail to capture the complexity inherent in primary studies' research designs. As we argue in this article, when complex L2 studies are…

In the realm of education, there has been an increasing emphasis on developing analytical thinking (AT) in the past few years. This systematic review focuses on an analysis of journal publications that have explored AT within the context of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education. This analysis investigated four primary…

Evaluation designs seek to provide evidence of impact and collect formative data to understand and improve programs and inform decisions. Formative data is commonly used at the onset of developing a new program to modify and improve before full implementation. However, formative data is often collected throughout the life of the program to shape…

Social withdrawal has been a topic of interest in the field of developmental psychology for many decades. However, researchers have yet to systematically examine the historical trends in social withdrawal research. To honor the 70th anniversary of "Merrill-Palmer Quarterly," this systematic scoping review maps the changes in social…

In organizational and academic settings, the strategic formation of teams is paramount, necessitating an approach that transcends conventional methodologies. This study introduces a novel application of multicriteria integer programming (MCIP), which simultaneously accommodates multiple criteria, thereby innovatively addressing the complex task of…

Students' active role is heavily emphasised in contemporary assessment research, policies and practices. Even then, students remain the objects of assessment in an era defined by accountability measures, testing and measurement: students are rarely heard on why, how and when assessment is conducted. In this way, assessment may hinder educational…

Research examining relations between language skills and social competence has yielded mixed findings. Three meta-analyses investigated links between language skills (overall, receptive, and expressive) and social competence in 2- to 12-year-old children. Data from 130 studies representing 62,120 children (M age at language assessment = 4.70…

Systematic reviews have been gaining attention as a research methodology and are among the most frequently cited sources in educational sciences. However, best practices for conducting systematic reviews in educational sciences are still evolving. We conducted N = 12 qualitative interviews to learn from experienced systematic review researchers…

This article discusses how the design of research should follow the questions the study seeks to address. The article provides practical and diverse examples of broad research questions applicable to researchers or program architects and summarizes how different methods should be employed to respond.

The Cochrane Rapid Review Methods Group (RRMG) first released interim guidance in March 2020 to support authors in conducting rapid reviews (RRs). The objective of this mixed-methods study was to assess the adherence and investigate authors' understanding of the RRMG guidance. We identified all documents citing the Interim Cochrane RRMG guidance…

Introduction: Missing data are bound to occur in education intervention research. Reasons vary but always have the consequence of reducing sample sizes and can, under certain conditions, seriously bias estimated intervention effects. A wide array of methods have been developed for handling missing data (Enders, 2023). Whereas older approaches…

Mediation analysis in Single Case Experimental Designs (SCEDs) evaluates intervention mechanisms for individuals. Despite recent methodological developments, no clear guidelines exist for maximizing power to detect the indirect effect in SCEDs. This study compares frequentist and Bayesian methods, determining (1) minimum required sample size to…

When designing cluster-randomized trials (CRTs), one important consideration is determining the proper sample sizes across levels and treatment conditions to cost-efficiently achieve adequate statistical power. This consideration is usually addressed in an optimal design framework by leveraging the cost structures of sampling and optimizing the…