In this article, the authors consider the power and limitations of responsiveness-to-intervention (RTI) for reducing the need for ongoing and intensive services for the segment of the school population traditionally identified as having a learning disability in mathematics. To assess the robustness of RTI, the authors describe four studies with…

Blended or hybrid course offerings in higher education are commonplace and much has been written about how to design a blended course effectively. This study examines publically available guides, documents, and books that espouse best or effective practices in blended course design to determine commonalities among such practices. A qualitative…

Problem based learning (PBL) in its most current form originated in Medical Education but has since been used in a variety of disciplines (Savery & Duffy, 1995) at a variety of educational levels (Savery, 2006). Although recent meta analyses have been conducted (Dochy, Segers, Van den Bossche, & Gijbels, 2003; Gijbels, Dochy, Van den…

The critical issue in special education today is no longer the assurance of access, but rather, the assurance of effectiveness. Determining which practices and interventions are most effective and efficient for ensuring optimal student achievement is a fundamental concern of special education teachers in this era of accountability. In this…

In this study, the instructional effectiveness of the planetarium in astronomy education was explored through a meta-analysis of 19 studies. This analysis resulted in a heterogeneous distribution of 24 effect sizes with a mean of +0.28, p less than 0.05. The variability in this distribution was not fully explained under a fixed effect model. As a…

Navigating the social world is an extraordinarily difficult and complex task. How do we think about other people's minds, and how do we come to infer other people's intentions from their actions? Developmental psychologists have shown that even very young infants are attuned to the emotions of those around them, imitate facial expressions and…

What is a learning style? No one seems to know for sure. The language used by learning style theorists is filled with ambiguities. Price (2004) maintains that "learning style is often used as a metaphor for considering the range of individual differences in learning" (p. 681). Is learning style merely a fanciful metaphor or is it the wave of the…

Meta-analyses of the correctional treatment literature have become increasingly common in recent years. These studies generally indicate that well-crafted treatment programs substantially reduce rates of recidivism. Nevertheless, a key issue that has emerged concerns the relative absence of detailed information on treatment program characteristics…

To assess the empirical estimates of the effect of education on social trust and social participation--the basic dimensions of individual social capital--a meta-analysis is applied, synthesizing 154 evaluations on social trust, and 286 evaluations on social participation. The publication bias problem is given special emphasis in the meta-analysis.…

Recent meta-analyses on melatonin has raised doubts as to whether melatonin is effective in treating sleep problems in people without intellectual disabilities. This is in contrast to results of several trials on melatonin in treating sleep problems in individuals with intellectual disabilities. To investigate the efficacy of melatonin in treating…

The purpose of this article is to synthesize the available studies regarding responsive interaction intervention (RII) for children with or at risk for developmental delays with a focus on six dimensions: (a) the characteristics of participants, (b) the features of RII, (c) the measurement of treatment fidelity, (d) the overall effectiveness of…

The Effective Instructional Strategies Series is a collection of six booklets based on the components used in Pacific Communities with High-performance In Literacy Development (Pacific CHILD), a principles-based professional development program consisting of research-based teaching and learning strategies proven to help improve students' reading…

Reading is critical to students' success in and out of school. One potential means for improving students' reading is writing. In this meta-analysis of true and quasi-experiments, Graham and Herbert present evidence that writing about material read improves students' comprehension of it; that teaching students how to write improves their reading…

Service-learning (SL) has become a popular teaching method everywhere from elementary schools to colleges. Despite the increased presence of SL in the education world, it is still unclear what student outcomes are associated with SL programs and what factors are related to more effective programs. A meta-analysis of 62 studies involving 11,837…

Objective: A growing body of literature has documented pediatric bipolar disorder to be a severely impairing form of psychopathology. However, concerns remain as to the inadequacy of the extant literature on its pharmacotherapy. Furthermore, treatment studies have not been systematically reviewed for treatment effects on core and associated…