Over the past few decades, urbanization and economic growth have widened the rural-urban gap not only in living standards but also in education quality. Children in impoverished areas are particularly vulnerable to psychosocial problems. While there is an increasing body of evidence regarding social emotional learning (SEL) interventions, such interventions are rarely found among children in rural China. Li and Hesketh conducted a study to examine the effectiveness of a school-based SEL programme among primary school children in a poor rural area in central China. Two schools participated in the study, one intervention school and one control school, with a final sample size of 496 (intervention = 206), ranging from grade 2 to grade 6 students. A Self-reported Strength and Difficulty Questionnaire and background information were collected 1 week before the intervention (T1) and 1 week (T2) and 5 months (T3) after the intervention. The SEL programme, mostly adapted from...

Educational programs consist of several features that together have an impact on student achievement, such as the use of small group activities, or the focus on vocabulary enhancement. What is difficult to know is which components are the ones that make the program work and determine the size of this effect. This information would be of great relevance for researchers and program developers to design effective interventions. The What Works Clearinghouse has applied a new meta-analysis method, called Bayesian meta-analysis, with the aim of exploring to what extent program components explain the impact of interventions. To investigate the potential of this new method, WWC used a total of 29 studies on the effects of 25 early literacy interventions in K–3 on alphabetics. A pool of experts in early literacy developed a taxonomy describing the program components and coded the 29 studies accordingly. The WWC focused its analysis on 15 component...

The COVID-19 pandemic has had significant repercussions on students’ academic performance. Notably, there has been a decline in students’ reading proficiency. Consequently, efforts to address these learning gaps, particularly among at-risk students, have proliferated. A recent quasi-experimental study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of the Achieve3000 program and its impact on students’ achievements, as well as potential influencing factors. Achieve3000 is a computer-based literacy program that integrates online delivery, teacher-guided instruction, and at-home study options. Its primary objective is to facilitate the growth of fluency, vocabulary, writing skills, reading comprehension, phonics, and phonemic awareness among pre-K-12 students. The program offers nonfiction reading materials that can be shared by teachers with the entire class, while the software generates customized assignments based on each student’s reading level. Achieve3000 also provides three different options based on students’ grade levels (preK-2, 3-5, 6-8) and three options based on their language proficiency (English Language Learners,...

Informed by the self-determination theory, parental homework involvement has generally been measured by two dimensions: supportive parental homework involvement (SPI, e.g., autonomy support, provision of structure) and intrusive parental homework involvement (IPI, e.g., controlling, monitoring). A meta-analysis by Jiang and colleagues investigated the association between these involvement types and students’ mathematics achievement. The meta-analysis identified 41 effect sizes from 20 empirical studies that reported Pearson’s correlation coefficient r and measuring tool of mathematics achievement. These studies were conducted from 2005 to 2022 and met the majority of the Joanna Briggs Institute Critical Appraisal Checklist criteria. Overall, for math achievement, a very small but significant positive effect was found for SPI (r = +0.076) in relation to math achievement, while a negative association was found for IPI (r = -0.153). Moderator analysis results are presented below. Significant different effects were found among three sub-types of SPI, autonomy support showed the strongest...

While many solutions to address poor academic achievement and attendance rates have focused on in-class interventions or tutoring, there is growing awareness and interest in supporting student performance through non-academic means, including health services. One such area is in addressing food insecurity through free or reduced-price meals in schools. In a recent study, Chandrasekhar and colleagues examined the influence of the Breakfast After the Bell (BATB) program in Dallas Independent Schools District on student academic performance and student attendance. BATB is a “second-chance breakfast option” for students arriving after the cafeteria has closed for the morning, in which students who arrive late to school can get breakfast and take it to class. Over the course of the 2017-2019 school years, BATB served over 819,000 breakfasts. In their pre/post study design, Chandrasekhar and colleagues used paired t-tests to examine the differences in mean reading and math scores, and school days attended...

Future Forward, formerly known as SPARK, is a program that received an Investing in Innovations grant to develop and assess its impact in seven Milwaukee Public Schools serving primarily Black and Latinx students. This program uses a school-family-community partnership approach to address the literacy needs of struggling readers and their families. A previous randomized study suggested two years of participation in the program had positive effects on reading achievement, school attendance, and foundational literacy. Jones and colleagues conducted a follow-up study to evaluate whether the benefits were sustained five years after participation ended. This study assessed student data on attendance, achievement, and demographics within five years after the end of the program, from the spring of 2015 to the winter of 2020. Results showed that students who received Future Forward continued to improve in reading achievement and school attendance, and were much less likely to be placed into special education...

Reading comprehension is an essential skill; hence, it is crucial to identify effective strategies to support children in developing this skill, particularly when they face challenges in reading. In a recent Bayesian network meta-analysis (BNMA), researchers examined the effectiveness of various combinations of text comprehension strategies in interventions for students with reading difficulties across grades 3 to 12. The meta-analysis included 52 studies and focused on commonly used strategies including main idea, text structure, retell, self-monitoring, graphic organizers, inference, and prediction. Among the 35 possible combinations of strategies examined, the meta-analysis found the main idea-text structure-retell combination to be the most effective in improving reading comprehension (Standard Mean Difference = 1.72). Close behind was the main idea-text structure-self monitoring-graphic organizers combination (SMD = 1.13), followed by the main idea strategy alone (SMD = 1.07). These combinations and individual strategies showed a significant positive impact on enhancing reading comprehension skills. On...

A recent article published in AERJ by Schneider and Bradford reported the results of a cluster randomized control trial evaluating the effectiveness of the Multiple Literacies in Project-Based Learning (ML-PBL) science intervention for third graders. This study was undertaken to add to the developing evidence of the program, which had previously undergone teaching experiments, a pilot test, and a field test. ML-PBL consists of four units and uses a “driving question” for each lesson to spark students’ interest and engagement. It incorporates cooperative, experiential learning for the students, assessments to ensure students meet learning expectations, and teacher professional development. The study included 2371 third graders (1165 in the experimental group, 1206 in the control group which received their business-as-usual science instruction) from 46 schools (23 E, 23 C) with 91 teachers (41 E, 50 C) from 111 classrooms (54 E, 57 C) during the 2018-19 school year. There were no...

A clustered randomized controlled trial (RCT) by Bai and colleagues evaluated the impact of an online computer-assisted learning (OCAL) intervention on academic and non-academic outcomes of grade 5 rural and migrant students in China. A random sample of 44 schools in rural areas was randomly assigned to either in a treatment group (n= 22) or a control group (n=22). Students in the treatment group attended two 40 min English online computer-assisted learning tutorials per week during the 2016 spring semester (about 3 months), while students in the control group continued their usual classes. The OCAL tutorial sessions provided only remedial materials which matched the content of the standard English curriculum studied in the class without any new material. A total of 1,342 students completed the program. After controlling baseline test scores, students’ and schools’ characteristics, results of regression analysis indicated that: Students in the treatment group outperformed those in the...