Dana Murano and colleagues conducted a meta-analysis to summarize the effects of social and emotional learning (SEL) interventions on the development of social and emotional skills and the reduction of problem behaviors in pre-schoolers. The review, published in Review of Educational Research, considered 48 studies that looked at the effects of either universal (delivered to all students) or targeted (delivered to students who were identified as being in need of additional support) SEL interventions. The interventions in these studies were delivered to pre-school-age children (mean age = 4.31 years), and a total of 207 effect sizes were extracted. Overall, the results of the meta-analysis suggest that pre-school children benefit from SEL interventions, and in particular those receiving targeted interventions, details are as follows: Compared with students in control conditions, students who received a universal SEL intervention showed overall improvements in social and emotional skills (effect size = +0.34) and reductions in...

Feedback was identified as a key factor in improving students’ learning. A recent article published in Frontiers in Psychology found that teachers’ use of feedback varied in different grades and had different relationships with students’ self-regulated learning (SRL). This study was conducted in a secondary school in Shanghai, China. Students were asked to report how often their teachers used different types of feedback, and were assessed by the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire for their SRL strategies. A total of 1,260 valid questionnaires were collected, of which 430, 460, and 370 were from students of Grades 10, 11, and 12, respectively. The findings showed that: Praise was used most frequently by teachers of 10th It was found to have the strongest correlations with students’ SRL strategies across grade levels. Criticism was used most frequently by 12th-grade teachers. It only had a weak correlation with SRL strategies regardless of grade levels....

Although learner-centered instruction has become increasingly popular, some may wonder what its effects on students from the non-western cultural group have been. A recent study published in European Journal of Psychology of Education investigated the effects of learner-centered instruction on the learning behaviors and academic motivation of Chinese students. Three hundred and ninety-four junior-high-school students from two schools in South-eastern China formed the experimental-group in this study, while 368 junior-high-school students from another two schools of matched background participated as the control group. Teachers in the experimental group received two months’ training in learner-centered instruction from university specialists, while teachers in the control groups continued teaching as usual, using the traditional teacher-centered approach. Students were assessed by measuring the perceived instruction behaviors of their teachers, their academic motivations and learning behaviors before and after the two-months’ training. Students in the experimental group were no different from the control-group students in...

Is writing about classroom content an effective way to learn? Arizona State University's Steven Graham and colleagues at the University of Utah recently performed a meta-analysis on the effects of writing about classroom content in social studies, science, and math. Specifically, they examined if writing increased student achievement, if the results differed among subjects, and if any relationships existed by grade level, activity type, or any other factors.  To be included, studies had to meet quality-indicator criteria including true or quasi-experimental research design, reliability of measures, controlling for teacher effects, multiple classes in the experimental and control conditions, experimental and control group pretest equivalence, and both groups experiencing equal amounts of time learning the same topics. This search yielded 56 studies in 53 documents meeting criteria for inclusion, involving 6,235 students in grades 1-11. Students in experimental groups wrote about classroom content, while most controls did not write at all. Forty-six percent...

There has been unprecedentedly large-scale amount of online learning or distant learning conducted every day during the COVID-19 outbreak, making people curious about the effectiveness of it. However, in 2010, the U.S. Department of Education had already conducted a meta-analysis of online learning studies. The report examined the effectiveness of online learning compared with face-to-face instruction and explored the practices and conditions that were associated with more effective online learning. The meta-analysis screened 50 effect sizes that fulfilled its inclusion criteria, providing a contrast between online learning and face-to-face learning or blended learning and face-to-face learning. However, given there were only a few rigorous studies of K-12 students at that time, 43 out of  the 50 effect sizes were drawn from research with older learners. In all, the results suggested that: Students in online conditions performed modestly better than students who learned the same material through traditional face-to-face instruction. However,...

Home is an important site where young children grow – a truism especially relevant now until classes resume. The importance of a high-quality early home-learning environment for a child’s educational and life outcomes has been highlighted by a report published for the Department for Education of the UK before. It suggested that the physical home itself and interaction in the home both matter, and parents should understand they have the power to improve them. Specifically, it is crucial for parents to support their children to achieve their milestones of early language and communication development. Following are some extracts of suggested actions for parents of children from age 2 to 5 identified by the National Literacy Trust and Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists: 2-3 years Tap out the beat to songs and rhymes. When playing with your child, give a running commentary on what they are doing, using action...

Harriet R. Tenenbaum and colleagues conducted a meta-analysis to examine results from 71 studies about the effects of peer interaction on learning. To be included in the review, studies had to include a comparison group. Peer interaction was defined as small groups of students working together to achieve common goals of learning. Approaches using more formal training, such as cooperative learning or peer tutoring, were excluded. The majority of the studies were conducted in the U.S. and U.K. and included more than 7,000 children between ages 4 and 18. Published in Journal of Educational Psychology, their findings suggest that: Peer interaction was effective in promoting learning in comparison with other types of learning conditions (effect size = +0.40) across different gender and age groups. In contrast, children working in peer groups were not more effective than children working individually with adults. There was also no effect for group size, with findings suggesting that...

A meta-analysis of classroom management interventions has found that they improved academic, behavioral, and social-emotional outcomes. Published in the Review of Educational Research, the study included 54 classroom management interventions in 47 studies published between 2003 and 2013. It included some interventions that had been evaluated several times (including Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies (PATHS), the Good Behavior Game, and Zippy’s Friends). About three-quarters of the studies were carried out in the U.S., with the remainder in Europe and Canada. Most interventions were focused on changing students’ behavior (85%), improving students’ social-emotional development (74%), or changing teachers’ behavior (54%). Only two interventions were specifically targeted to improving teacher–student relationships. The analysis found that: There was an overall effect size of +0.22 for the interventions, with a slightly higher effect on behavior (+0.24), and less on social-emotional (+0.21) and academic (+0.17) outcomes. There was no significant effect on motivational outcomes. The analysis also indicated that...

Researchers from the University of Oxford’s Department of Education conducted a meta-analysis to examine what effect peer assessment interventions have on academic performance. Published in Educational Psychology Review, the meta-analysis evaluated the effect of peer assessment on academic performance when compared to no assessment and teacher assessment. Fifty-four studies were included in the meta-analysis, of which 45% were with school-age students. Studies had to examine the effect of peer assessment on non-self-reported measures of academic achievement and have a control or comparison group, using no assessment, teacher assessment, or self-assessment. The findings from the analysis indicated that: Overall there was a significant positive effect of peer assessment on academic performance compared with no assessment (ES= +0.31) and teacher assessment (ES = +0.28). The effect size was similar when peer assessment compared with self-assessment (ES = +0.23) though this result was not significant. The effect sizes were slightly larger for school-age children than undergraduates....