In this article, we present a conceptual framework for studying research impact focusing on the foundations that need to be in place to accelerate an observable change of policy, practice or behaviour. The article investigates the relationship between micro-impacts and societal change, and how smaller impacts scale into larger cascades of end…

Generally, psychology (as well as school psychology) aligns with medicine in establishing and utilizing evidence-based practices (EBP). More recently, strong calls have been made and advanced to ensure that psychology evolves and incorporates social justice principles to safeguard equity, diversity, and inclusion to benefit all. This essay…

Background: Bradford Hill (BH) viewpoints are widely used to assess causality in systematic reviews, but their application has often lacked reproducibility. We describe an approach for assessing causality within systematic reviews ('causal' reviews), illustrating its application to the topic of income inequality and health. Our approach draws on…

Methods of network meta-analysis (NMA) can be classified as arm-based and contrast-based approaches. There are several arm-based approaches, and some of these have been criticized because they recover inter-study information and hence do not obey the principle of concurrent control. Here, we point out that recovery of inter-study information in…

Integrating machine learning (ML) methods in educational research has the potential to greatly impact upon research, teaching, learning and assessment by enabling personalised learning, adaptive assessment and providing insights into student performance, progress and learning patterns. To reveal more about this notion, we investigated ML…

Survey-based research is vital in education and social sciences, offering insights into human behaviors and perceptions. The prevalence of such studies in medical education has risen by 33% over the past decade. Despite this growth, the utility of survey findings depends on the study design quality and measure validity. Many manuscripts are…

Gamification possesses a great potential to shape human behaviors and performance. However, the mixed results in gamification research suggest the need to develop a thorough understanding of the mechanistic underpinnings of gamification. Although self-determination theory (SDT) provides a solid theoretical framework to achieve such purposes, it…

Text and data mining activities -- that is, the automated processing of digital materials to uncover new knowledge -- have become more frequent in all areas of scientific research. Because they require a massive use of copyrighted work, there are evident conflicts with copyright legislation. Countries at the forefront of research and development…

Evidence suggests that the incidence of research misconduct is not in decline despite efforts to improve awareness, education and governance mechanisms. Two responses to this problem are favoured: first, the promotion of an agent-centred ethics approach to enhance researchers' personal responsibility and accountability, and second, a change in…

I propose two practical advances to the argument-based approach to validity: developing a living document and incorporating preregistration. First, I present a potential structure for the living document that includes an up-to-date summary of the validity argument. As the validation process may span across multiple studies, the living document…

While all learning and knowledge can be attributed to experiences, not all experiences are educative. Experiential learning is a highly utilized theory and pedagogical practice in agricultural education and has been since its inception as a discipline. The purpose of this research is to examine the theory of experiential learning as it applies to…

The paper argues that learning analytics as a research field can benefit from a theory-informed shared language to describe sensemaking of learning and teaching data. To make the case for such shared language, first, I critically review prominent sensemaking theories to then demonstrate how studies in learning analytics do not use coherent…

Schools are considered knowledge-creating organisations that find it difficult to develop and implement innovations on their own. Knowledge mobilisation is seen as the key to overcoming this problem. In particular, the use of external sources of knowledge is regarded as an important lever for change. However, there is a lack of concepts and…

Biochemistry is becoming increasingly crucial for undergraduates majoring in biology, chemistry, agriculture, and medicine. In recent years, much research has been carried out on promoting this course's teaching outcomes. However, the knowledge structure of undergraduate biochemistry teaching research has yet to be formed. Here, 715 validated…

We examined the use of person- and identity-first language (PFL, IFL) in scholarly writing about autism by reviewing 12,962 journal abstracts from 11 autism research journals (mostly covering the years 2001-2022). We found a preference for PFL (64.68%) over IFL (15.83%) when considering aggregated, within-journal breakdowns (with abstracts using…