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...

School dropout remains a significant issue. In 2018, over 2 million youths aged 16 to 24 lacked a high school diploma and were no longer enrolled in school. Among the programs funded by the U.S. Department of Education to address this challenge is the Peer Group Connection-High School (PGC-HS), a school-based peer mentoring program designed to facilitate the delicate transition from middle school to high school for ninth-grade students. Mentors are tasked with creating a supportive environment where students engage in a curriculum of group activities tailored to address the challenges linked to this transition. This curriculum places emphasis on developing critical thinking, sound decision-making, a sense of belonging, positive relationships, and motivation. In randomized controlled trial (RCT) involving six public high schools in North Carolina, the program was implemented over three academic years, spanning from 2016 to 2019. A total of 1351 students were randomly assigned to either the...

Forty years ago, The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) was enacted, stating that students with disabilities should be included in general education classrooms as much as possible, while still receiving appropriate services. Cole and colleagues conducted a study to examine the academic outcomes of high school students placed in inclusive settings compared to similar high school students placed in less inclusive settings. They employed propensity score matching techniques to analyze data from the state of Indiana, covering nearly 24,000 students with disabilities who were in eighth grade in 2013 and followed through to their graduation in 2018. Results showed that students with disabilities who spent at least 80% of their time in inclusive general education classrooms performed better on standardized tests in math (18.4 points higher) and reading (24.3 points higher) than similar peers who spent less time in inclusive education. In addition, the students who spent more time...

Using research data in practice is not an easy task; rather, it requires educators and local decision makers to delve beyond the summary data and dive into a series of analyses that show the performance and experiences of specific groups of students. A recent report by WestEd offers local decision makers valuable insights on using disaggregated quantitative data to understand educational disparities. Because one overall effect size might not reflect the specific performance of a given subgroup, separating quantitative data for student subgroups by specific criteria (e.g., ethnicity) provides a better picture of the inequalities that inform educational decisions. For example, is a certain outcome consistent for all ethnic groups? Does it differ by socio-economic status? Is it specific to students facing challenges? The report focuses on three measures to address disproportionality, namely, overrepresenting or underrepresenting groups of students in an educational context. Take, for example, a district with 10%...

Gender-math stereotype refers to the belief that boys are innately better at learning math than girls. Wu and colleagues conducted two studies to investigate whether this stereotype can be transmitted among children’s peers, affecting their math ability and psychological outcomes. The first study analysed data from the China Education Panel Survey (CEPS), a large-scale national survey. The sample included 8,029 grade 7 and grade 9 students from 208 classrooms where students were randomly assigned to each classroom.  The extent of the gender-math stereotype among a student's peers was measured as the proportion of the student’s peer in each classroom who held this belief (range: 13.3% - 91.9%). Accounting for student, classroom, and school effects, the fixed-effect linear model revealed the following results: As the proportion of peers holding the stereotype increased by 1 standard deviation (SD), the gap in math scores between girls and boys widened by 0.894 SD, with...

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,...

In recent research studies, concerns have arisen regarding the potential inflation of intervention effects in reported findings, a phenomenon known as the ‘winner’s curse’. This raises questions about whether clearinghouses inadvertently contribute to this issue by prioritizing studies with statistically significant results for replication or funding. The latest article by Valentine, who has experience as an investigator at the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC), explores the challenges faced by these organizations in this context. Clearinghouses have the challenging task of evaluating the credibility of claims relevant to their consumers, distinguishing between more and less credible ones. This complexity arises due to the intricate nature of studies and the limited empirical evidence available regarding the importance of various aspects of study conduct. Despite these challenges, the author argues that establishing evaluation standards can benefit the research community by serving as a communication tool to emphasize crucial aspects of research design and implementation....

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...