In this paper we analyze the effects of the type of collaborative task (elaboration of concept map vs elaboration of expository summary) on the performance and on the level of collaboration achieved by Mexican university students in the multimedia learning of a social sciences content (Communication Psychology). Likewise, the processes of social…

Source-based essays are evaluated both on the quality of the writing and the content appropriate interpretation and use of source material. Hence, composing a high-quality source-based essay (an essay written based on source material) relies on skills related to both reading (the sources) and writing (the essay) skills. As such, source-based…

Syllabification by hyphens (e.g., hy-phen-a-tion) is a standard procedure in early Finnish reading instruction. However, recent findings indicate that hyphenation slows down children's reading already during the first grade (Häikiö, Hyönä, & Bertram, 2015, 2016). In the present study, it was examined whether this slowdown is indicative of…

Survival analysis is an advanced statistical method to investigate the occurrence and the timing of an important event such as school access, dropout, and graduation in a longitudinal framework. The aim of our study is to provide practical guidelines for empirical researchers in choosing an appropriate survival analysis model. For this goal, this…

Thousands of U.S. school districts and many international schools use MAP® Growth™ to monitor the academic growth of their students and to inform instruction. The MAP Growth assessment is untimed, meaning that limits are not placed on how much time a student has to respond to the items. However, to help schools understand the amount of time MAP…

Self-explanations are commonly used to assess on-line reading comprehension processes. However, traditional methods of analysis ignore important temporal variations in these explanations. This study investigated how dynamical systems theory could be used to reveal linguistic patterns that are predictive of self-explanation quality. High school…

Formative Assessment System for Teachers (FAST) assessment data indicates that a percentage of students are not at the proficient level at the end of third-grade despite interventions being put into place to improve reading fluency rates. This study examined the "Read Naturally Live" fluency program and determined if it increased fluency…

The current study aims to investigate the effect of sheltered instruction strategies on developing EFL first year secondary stage students' reading comprehension skills. Seventy EFL first year secondary stage students were randomly assigned into two groups; experimental (n=35) and control (n=35). The experimental group used sheltered instruction…

This study evaluated the efficacy of the Word Learning Strategies (WLS) supplementary program designed to develop upper-elementary students' vocabulary skills in order to improve reading comprehension. The study used a true, group-randomized, experimental design, which randomly assigned 46 4th grade classrooms (n=1324 students) from 12 districts…

In response to a request for additional analyses, in particular reporting confidence intervals around the results, we re-analyzed the data from prior studies. This supplementary report presents the results of the additional analyses addressing classification accuracy, reliability, and criterion-related validity evidence. For ease of reference, we…

Early childhood trauma increases the risk of academic difficulties. The purpose of this study was to investigate the prevalence of early contact with child protection services (CPS) and to determine whether early exposure to maltreatment investigations was associated with important academic outcomes. The authors focused specifically on…

Finnish students have been among the world's strongest performers on standardized assessments throughout the past decade. Consequently, educators and scholars are interested in how to explain such results. A common explanation, as seen on social media, is that Finnish educators do not regularly assess their students. This study explores educators'…

Recent research has shown how the statistical bias in Rasch model difficulty estimates induced by guessing in multiple-choice items can be eliminated. Using vertical scaling of a high-profile national reading test, it is shown that the dominant effect of removing such bias is a nonlinear change in the unit of scale across the continuum. The…

Reading research has shown that variable relationships exist between measures of oral reading fluency and reading comprehension, depending on whether the language of the text is the reader's first language or an additional language. This paper explores this phenomenon, using reading assessment data for 2,000 Kenyan children in two or three…

The present research explores working memory (WM) development in monolingual as well as emergent bilingual children immersed in an L2 at school. Evidence from recent years suggests that bilingualism may boost domain-general executive control, but impair nonexecutive linguistic processing. Both are relevant for verbal WM, but different paradigms…