Evidence-based practices (EBPs) are instructional techniques that meet prescribed criteria related to the research design, quality, quantity, and effect size of supporting research, which have the potential to help bridge the research-to-practice gap and improve student outcomes. In this article, the authors (a) discuss the importance of clear…

Educators have widely used cognitive strategy instruction to address reading comprehension deficits evidenced by students with learning disabilities. However, no one has yet conducted a review of the quality of this literature. This review applies the quality indicators advocated by Gersten et al. (2005) and Horner et al. (2005) to evaluate the…

Explores the use of autobiography as a tool for increasing student participation, uncovering student attitudes and values, and as a source of examples for lectures and class discussion. Concludes that information gathered can be used to alert students to potential problems of using summary statistics and nonrepresentative samples when generalizing…

Exemplary Middle Grades Research: Evidence-Based Studies Linking Theory to Practice features research published throughout 2009 in MGRJ that has been identified by the Information Age Publishing's review board as the most useful in terms of assisting educators with making practical applications from evidence-based studies to classroom and school…

Suggests techniques for teaching about gender role socialization. Personal, qualitative data provided by children can be used effectively to: (1) highlight issues in gender role socialization; (2) generate research hypotheses; (3) stimulate creative research designs; (4) illustrate how gender role socialization occurs; and (5) illustrate the…

Comparative analyses of educational methods have often been inconclusive; there are several possible explanations: (1) each method is optimally effective under specifically differing circumstances; (2) the studies tend to emphasize one input variable to the exclusion of the others; (3) the methods do not have widely accepted definitions; and (4)…

This study contributes to the field by identifying a broad range of traditional and newer middle grade policies and practices, and determining in California which of these differentiate higher- from lower-performing schools serving similar student populations, with performance measured by the state's standards-based tests. Based on a sample of 303…

In the 2008-09 school year researchers from EdSource and Stanford University conducted a large-scale study of 303 middle grades schools in California. The team surveyed 303 principals, 3,752 English Language Arts (ELA) and math teachers in grades 6-8, and 157 superintendents of the districts and charter management organizations that oversee the…