A meta-analysis examining the evidence between overall screen time, specific screen-based activities, and academic achievement found that overall screen time is not related to children’s and teens’ academic achievement, yet the type of screen time is. Mireia Adelantado-Renau and colleagues in Spain found that TV and video game time greater than two hours a day was associated with poorer academic achievement, while internet and mobile phone time was not. In addition, the negative effects on academics were larger for teens than for children. The meta-analysis included 58 studies from 23 countries that met its inclusion criteria, encompassing the academic achievement of 106,000 4-18 year olds (assessed by school grades, standardized tests, and academic failure). Subgroup analysis was conducted between children and teens. The findings were: In children (4-12 years old), the length of TV watching negatively affected performance in language (ES= -0.20) and math (ES= -0.36). in teens (12-18 years old), longer TV...

The Education Endowment Foundation in the UK has published an evaluation of Digital Feedback in Primary Maths, a program that aims to improve primary school teachers’ feedback to students. The intervention uses a tablet application called Explain Everything, diagnostic assessments, and training on effective feedback. The app allows teachers to provide students with digitally recorded feedback on a tablet, rather than written feedback. Students have the opportunity to review their feedback and develop their work further. By improving teachers’ diagnostic and feedback skills when teaching math in primary schools, the intervention aims to ultimately improve student outcomes in math. To estimate the impact of Digital Feedback on math achievement, the evaluation used a randomized controlled trial involving 2,564 students in 108 classes across 34 English primary schools. While the intervention took place in each school, classrooms were randomly assigned to the treatment or control group, which carried on with business-as-usual teaching. The...

This meta-analysis, published in Educational Research Review, explores whether shared reading interventions are equally effective across a range of study designs, across a range of different outcome variables, and for children from different socioeconomic status (SES) groups. Studies were included in the meta-analysis if they met the following criteria: Must contain a universal and/or targeted shared book reading intervention Must include at least one control group Participants must be typically developing children aged seven years old or younger Must not target multilingual populations and/or the acquisition of an additional language Must isolate the variable of interest (shared book reading) Must report on objective quantitative measure of language ability Must provide sufficient data to calculate the effect size The results suggest : There was an overall effect size (+0.19) of shared reading on children’s language development. This effect was moderated by the type of control group used and was near zero in studies...

A study published in AERA Open looks at the long-term effects of the INSIGHTS program – a social-emotional learning intervention that supports children’s ability to self-regulate by enhancing their attention and behavior management. Between 2008 and 2012, a total of 22 elementary schools from three New York City school districts were randomly assigned to participate in the INSIGHTS program or to an attention-control condition (an after-school reading program). A previous study found that the INSIGHTS program reduced children’s disruptive behavior and increased behavioral engagement by the end of first grade. This study uses administrative data for those students to examine whether receiving the intervention in kindergarten and first grade had any impact on provision of special education services or grade retention by the end of fifth grade. The study also considers whether impacts varied for low- versus high-income students. The findings suggest that: Students in the INSIGHTS program were less likely to receive special education services between kindergarten...

Children from low-income families are more likely than those from higher-income families to have poor social, emotional, cognitive, behavioral, and health outcomes. One approach that has helped parents and their young children is home visiting, which provides information, resources, and support to expectant parents and families with young children. This MDRC brief summarizes prior evidence on the effects of four evidence-based models of home visiting using information from seven studies of families with children ages 5 to 21. Specifically, the brief looks at what the effects of home visiting are for families as children get older, and how monetary benefits of home visiting compare with their costs. The key findings of the briefing report include: Evidence-based home visiting has improved outcomes for parents and children across a wide range of child ages, outcome areas, and national models Evidence-based home visiting appears to be cost-effective in the long term The largest benefits from...

A review of evidence published by the Education Endowment Foundation in the UK shows how parental engagement can have a positive effect on a child’s academic achievement – regardless of age or socioeconomic status. The review, conducted by the Universities of Plymouth and Exeter and supported by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR), concludes that parental engagement in children’s learning is associated with improved academic outcomes, and that the association is stronger when parental engagement is defined as parents’ expectations for their children’s academic achievement. All studies controlled for parents’ education and/or family socioeconomic status. The review highlights areas of promise for how schools and early education settings can support parents in a way that improves their children’s learning. Examples include family literacy interventions to help boost younger children’s learning, and summer reading programs that improve school-aged children’s learning, particularly among families from more disadvantaged backgrounds. An overarching recommendation is the...

The American Institutes for Research (AIR) and Attendance Works have released a new report, Using Chronic Absence Data to Improve Conditions for Learning, which describes how data on chronic absence, defined as a student missing 10 or more days of school, can be a tool to warn administrators that students are not getting the support they need. The first half of the report describes four school characteristics that promote attendance — physical and emotional health and safety; belonging, connectedness, and support; academic challenge and engagement; and adult and student social and emotional competence — and how they relate to attendance. The second half of the report describes how chronic attendance data can be used to diagnose weaknesses in learning conditions and presents specific steps that schools can take to promote better conditions.   Source (Open Access) : Chang, H.N., Osher, D., Schanfield, M., Sundius, J. & Bauer, L. (2019). Using Chronic...

Self-regulated learning has been regarded as essential for effective learning. Research suggests that self-regulated learning is associated with academic performance, but different self-regulated learning strategies are not equally effective. Addressing the gap that occurred because few studies conducted in Asia were included in a previous meta-analysis, a meta-analysis published in Frontiers in Psychology has investigated what the most effective strategies for Chinese students were. Using Chinese academic databases, Li and colleagues analyzed 264 independent samples that involved 23,497 participants from 59 studies. In order to be included in this meta-analysis, studies had to be conducted in real teaching situations; studies based on online learning environments were excluded. Furthermore, participants had to be elementary, junior high or secondary high school students in China. The effect sizes of self-regulated learning strategies on academic achievement were analyzed. The result showed that:  Among the self-regulated learning strategies, self-efficacy (ES= 0.70), self-evaluation (ES= 0.72), and task strategies (ES= 0.60)...

Researchers from Queen’s University in Belfast have explored the relationship between well-being and academic achievement scores among primary school children, and found it to be statistically significant. These findings were based on data on academic achievement and a range of well-being indicators gathered through a cross-sectional survey of 1,081 students aged 7-11 in Northern Ireland. The team used six of the most common measures of well-being, covering psychological factors, school engagement factors, and family and peer relationship factors. The authors found that The positive relationship between well-being and achievement was the same for all children, regardless of their gender or socio-economic background. For Year 7 students who have high levels of wellbeing (a standard deviation above the sample mean), the predicted probability of achieving the expected national standard in English and Mathematics was 9.4 percentage point higher than those of low levels of wellbeing (a standard deviation below the sample mean). Neither...