Qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) is an empirical research method that has gained some popularity in the social sciences. At the same time, the literature has long been convinced that QCA is prone to committing causal fallacies when confronted with non-causal data. More specifically, beyond a certain case-to-factor ratio, the method is…

In the domain of programming, a growing number of algorithms automatically generate data-driven, next-step hints that suggest how students should edit their code to resolve errors and make progress. While these hints have the potential to improve learning if done well, few evaluations have directly assessed or compared the quality of different…

Dialogue act (DA) classification plays an important role in understanding, interpreting and modeling dialogue. Dialogue acts (DAs) represent the intended meaning of an utterance, which is associated with the illocutionary force (or the speaker's intention), such as greetings, questions, requests, statements, and agreements. In natural language…

In 1989, New Zealand started to follow an international trend of reforming education policy according to the neoliberal principles of competition, choice and self-managing schools. Since then, the increasing availability of digital data in schools has corresponded with the development of student achievement measurement tools and benchmarking of…

There is an increasing requirement in higher education (HE) worldwide to deliver excellence. Benchmarking is widely used for this purpose, but methodological approaches to the creation of benchmark metrics vary greatly. Approaches require selection of factors for inclusion and subsequent calculation of benchmarks for comparison. We describe an…

The aim of this study is to compare students' use of number sense strategies based on their mathematics success levels. Participants were 129 seventh graders from three elite secondary schools in Trabzon. Data were collected through a written examination with 10 problems and semi-structured interviews. Interview data were analyzed by considering…

"The State of Preschool 2017" is the 15th edition of the National Institute for Early Education Research's (NIEER) annual report tracking state-funded preschool access, resources, and quality. Since 2002, many states have made progress, a few have fallen behind, and a handful have emerged as leaders. As a result, disparities in access to…

"The State of Preschool 2016" is the latest edition of our annual yearbook report profiling state-funded prekindergarten programs in the United States. NIEER's [National Institute for Early Education Research's] "State Preschool Yearbook" is the only national report on state-funded preschool programs with detailed information…

This paper discusses methods for benchmarking vocational education and training colleges and presents results from a number of models. It is conceptually difficult to benchmark vocational colleges. The colleges typically offer a wide range of course programmes, and the students come from different socioeconomic backgrounds. We solve the…

Efforts to develop common higher education data standards are expanding both within and across countries. The institutional research (IR) community plays a critical role in assuring that these efforts capture the diverse manifestations of the postsecondary and tertiary education systems and promote responsible comparisons. This chapter provides…

Enrollment is rising across the nation's community colleges, but completion rates remain untenably low. Reformers are focusing on the importance of using comprehensive, high-quality data on student progress and completion to bring about change. A core tenet of Achieving the Dream: Community Colleges Count has been to embed a culture of…

The purpose of this study is to study the performance of different methods (inverse probability weighting and estimation of informative bounds) to control for differential attrition by comparing the results of different methods using two datasets: an original dataset from Portland Public Schools (PPS) subject to high rates of differential…

The "2015 State of Preschool Yearbook" profiles state-funded prekindergarten programs in the United States. This Yearbook presents data on state-funded prekindergarten during the 2014-2015 school year as well as documenting more than a decade of change in state pre-K since the first Yearbook collected data on the 2001-2002 school year.…

The goal of this paper is to provide guidance for applied education researchers in using multi-level data to study the effects of interventions implemented at the school level. Two primary approaches are currently employed in observational studies of the effect of school-level interventions. One approach employs intact school matching: matching…

The purpose of this chapter is to discuss the conceptual, methodological, and statistical challenges in selecting appropriate peer institutions for comparative purposes. The authors' approach embraces a Western scientific tradition that physical things and phenomena can be "reduced into a set of key variables--identifiable parts--that make key…