Tag: RCT

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Achievement Effective Teaching Approach Higher Education

Learning from deliberate errors: A new teaching strategy

Recent research by Qiang, Ma, and Li challenges traditional beliefs about avoiding errors in education by demonstrating that deliberately making errors can significantly enhance learning outcomes. The researchers conducted three experiments with non-psychology undergraduate students (aged 18-25) from Northwest Normal University in China. Participants were required to study definitions of psychological concepts and perform recall tests. They were randomly assigned to one of three learning conditions:

  1. Deliberate errors: Students intentionally generated plausible errors while studying psychological concepts and then corrected them (e.g., “Memory is the physiological [psychological] process of accumulating …”).
  2. Retrieval practice: Students studied material and then attempted to recall it from memory.
  3. Restudy: Students repeatedly read, copied the material and underlined key information.

Experiment 1 assessed immediate recall of psychological concept definitions with 161 participants. Experiment 2 examined delayed testing (one week later) using the same learning approaches with 162 participants. Experiment 3 combined both immediate and delayed testing and enhanced the retrieval practice condition by adding feedback and an additional learning opportunity, involving 149 participants.

The results consistently showed that deliberate errors and retrieval practice yielded similar results in immediate testing, both outperforming restudy. However, in delayed testing, deliberate errors significantly outperformed retrieval practice with and without feedback, and both strategies outperformed restudy.

The findings suggest that deliberate errors are particularly effective for long-term retention. When students deliberately generate plausible errors before correction, they engage in deeper cognitive processing, form unique memory trace, and enhance the discriminability of knowledge. Despite these clear benefits, students consistently underestimated the effectiveness of deliberate errors, suggesting a metacognitive illusion that teachers need to address.

 

Source: Qiang, X., Ma, X., & Li, T. (2025). Learning from errors: Deliberate errors enhance learning. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 82, 102379. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cedpsych.2025.102379… Read the rest

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Educational Administration and Leadership K-12 Education

Using district messaging platforms to reduce chronic absenteeism

In the years since COVID, chronic absenteeism has remained a serious concern across the United States, negatively impacting student learning and achievement. Given the breadth of absenteeism, it is beneficial to identify cost-effective means of improving attendance for a large number of students. Musaddiq and colleagues sought to address this through personalized monthly email and text messages sent to parents through the messaging platforms used by four public school districts in the metro-Atlanta area of Georgia. Messages were designed to inform parents about the number of absences their children had and how that number compared to their peers’.

Results showed that for students whose caregivers were sent the messages (n=>28,300), the probability of chronic absenteeism was reduced by 2 percentage points, although not all caregivers received the message; students whose caregivers received the text messages saw greater reductions in end-of-year absences and the probability of chronic absenteeism (a decrease of 4 percentage points) than non-experimental district students (n=>347,300).

The study also pointed to useful practical findings related to reaching parents. The researchers noted that many parents were not reachable through existing district messaging platforms, that emails were more often received than text messages, and that the parents of students who were most in need of improving attendance were the most difficult to reach. These findings highlight that “light-touch, low-cost, and scalable” parental outreach efforts through existing platforms can have a positive impact on chronic absenteeism, but also point to ways to further enhance programmatic impact, for instance working with districts and schools to identify additional correct means of contacting parents, for instance.

 

Source: Musaddiq, T., Prettyman, A., & Smith, J. (2024). Using existing school messaging platforms to inform parents about their child’s attendance. Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness, 17(4), 770–805. https://doi.org/10.1080/19345747.2023.2264841… Read the rest

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Achievement Educational Administration and Leadership Kindergarten

Can learning apps at home enhance children’s school readiness?

A study by Niklas and colleagues investigated the impact of Learning4Kids, an app-based family intervention approach, on enhancing kindergarten children’s literacy and mathematics skills before they enter school. The study involved 500 German children (mean age 5 years) who were recruited in two cohorts and randomly assigned to one of two intervention groups or one of two control groups:

  1. Literacy intervention group (n=151)
  2. Mathematics intervention group (n=151)
  3. Control group with tablets with control apps (n=98)
  4. Control group without tablets (n=100)

The intervention lasted approximately six months, with children using specially designed high-quality educational apps at home. The literacy apps focused on letter knowledge, phonological awareness, and language development, while the mathematics apps targeted number knowledge, counting, and measurement. Crucially, these apps were developed avoiding distracting elements while promoting active learning with appropriate difficulty progression. The control apps did not focus on literacy and numeracy but rather on general cognitive abilities.

After controlling background information and intelligence, children in the intervention groups significantly outperformed those in the control groups in their respective domains. The literacy intervention was particularly effective for letter knowledge and phonological awareness, and the mathematics intervention for number knowledge and backwards counting. Importantly, longer app usage correlated with greater skill improvements, with an average of 4.5 minutes of daily use producing a 0.1 SD gain in mathematical competence and 2.5 min a 0.1 SD gain in literary competence.

These findings demonstrated that high-quality educational apps can be a cost-effective, accessible way to support kindergarten children’s school readiness. However, the researchers emphasize that most commercially available educational apps lack empirical validation and may not deliver similar benefits.

 

Source (Open Access): Niklas, F., Birtwistle, E., Mues, A., & Wirth, A. (2025). Learning apps at home prepare children for school. Child Development, 96(2), 577–590. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.14184… Read the rest

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Educational Administration and Leadership Kindergarten Programme Evaluation

Could a short professional development program enhance children’s science learning outcomes?

A recent experimental study by Guan and Hu in southeast China investigated two approaches to improving early childhood pre-service teachers’ science teaching abilities and children’s learning outcomes:

  • The Making the Most of Classroom Interactions (MMCI) course alone
  • An Integrated Intervention Program (IIP) that combined MMCI with peer coaching

The MMCI course, based on the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS) framework, consisted of four 2-hour sessions focused on effective instructional support strategies, utilizing video analysis and sharing of strategy implementations. The peer coaching is a collaborative approach which involved teachers in small groups reviewing each other’s teaching videos and providing structured feedback.

The researchers randomly assigned 87 pre-service teachers, who received standard training, to three conditions: MMCI alone (n=31), IIP (MMCI plus peer coaching, n=30), and a control group (n=26). The intervention lasted four weeks, and teachers’ beliefs, knowledge, skills, and classroom practices were measured through self-reported questionnaire, video-based test, and teaching video assessment. Researchers assessed learning outcomes for 305 children (mean age = 5.69) in these teachers’ classrooms.

The findings revealed that both MMCI and IIP significantly improved teachers’ science teaching beliefs, knowledge, instructional practices, and skills. Both approaches enhanced children’s science problem-solving skills and belief about the ease of learning science, though no significant improvements were found on science competence, science liking, or concept understanding.

Notably, the IIP group demonstrated greater gain in teachers’ teaching knowledge and children’s problem-solving abilities compared to MMCI-only group. The study highlights the importance of integrating structured training like MMCI with collaborative peer coaching to maximize pre-service teacher development and children’s learning.

 

Source: Guan, L., & and Hu, B. Y. (n.d.). Effects of the MMCI instructional support intervention and peer coaching on ECE pre-service teachers’ science teaching and children’s learning. Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness, 0(0), 1–29. https://doi.org/10.1080/19345747.2025.2493653… Read the rest

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Achievement Effective Teaching Approach Higher Education

Can university students improve their learning by reading a two-page study manual on their own?

Courses designed to teach study skills have been found to be helpful, but they are often time-consuming, costly, and not widely accessible. A recent study, therefore, explored whether providing students with a brief two-page study manual with effective learning techniques could be a more simple and cost-effective approach for improving learning.

This study randomly assigned 87 students from three courses related to psychology at Stockholm University to either receive the study manual (n=43) or continue studying as usual (n=44) for one semester, and then compared their learning outcomes. The manual briefly explained how students might improve learning by combining the learning techniques: retrieval practice, elaboration, and distributed practice. The manual group received a downloadable PDF study manual and was informed that its use was optional, whereas the non-manual group was notified that they had not been selected to receive the manual.

Results showed that the study manual significantly enhanced students’ learning performance by increasing their likelihood of passing exams by about 12% and of achieving high grades by around 24%, with the greatest improvement seen in the most challenging course. In addition, the manual boosted self-regulated learning for some students by increasing their use of the three aforementioned learning techniques, which likely contributed to improved learning performance. However, fewer than half of the students reported being influenced by the manual, suggesting that while providing knowledge of effective learning techniques alone may be sufficient for some students to translate the knowledge into action, others may need additional guidance or support.

In summary, the study manual shows promise as a tool for enhancing students’ learning performance and self-regulated learning, and some students may require additional training or support beyond the manual alone to start using them.

 

Source (Open Access): Jemstedt, A. (2024). Enhancing learning with a two-page study manual. Learning and Instruction, 90, 101852. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.learninstruc.2023.101852… Read the rest

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Educational Administration and Leadership Kindergarten Programme Evaluation

Can a video-based parent-child program improve preschooler’s executive function?

Growing evidence indicates that executive function (EF) plays a vital role in enhancing children’s learning, and EFs are responsive to intervention. A recent study by Lau and colleagues investigated the effects of the Parent-Child Brain Camp (The Camp), a video-based intervention program designed to enhance EF skills in children aged 5 to 6. The Camp incorporates play-based and age-appropriate interactive activities to three targeted core EF components: working memory, inhibitory control, and cognitive flexibility. Owing to the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown, the program was conducted online in the home environment in spring 2022. It consisted of 12 video Zoom sessions, each lasting about 20 minutes, with parental involvement to support children’s motivation and engagement.

Participants were Chinese middle-class families from Hong Kong, recruited from 6 kindergartens and social media. Eligible families were randomly assigned to either the treatment group or control group. The treatment group received 3 video interventions weekly for 4 weeks. The analytic sample comprised 79 children in the treatment group and 74 in the control group, with a mean age of 68.9 months. Pre-test and post-test scores were collected via Zoom for four EF assessment tasks. Results revealed that the treatment group showed significantly higher improvement in composite EF scores. Specifically, they had significantly higher increment on the Mr. Cucumber task compared to control group.

The study demonstrated a brief period of video-based intervention program could enhance young children’s EFs. While parents’ engagement may be an important factor in these improvement, its specific effect could not be isolated. Moreover, the long-term effects require further investigation, as does the reliability and validity of online EF assessments.

 

Source (Open Access): Lau, E. Y. H., Wu, X., Siu, C. T. S., Williams, K. E., & Bautista, A. (2025). Examining the effectiveness of a video-based parent–child program on executive functions for children 5 to 6 years old: A randomized controlled trial. Child Development, 96(2), 781–796. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.14208… Read the rest