Increasing the playback speed of video lectures is popular amongst students as a time saving strategy, but does this negatively impact test performance? Here, we conducted a meta-analysis to examine the effect of increasing video lecture playback speed on content test performance. A meta-regression with robust variance estimation was used to…

Teacher professional development (PD) is essential to continuously improve teaching skills, to adapt to diverse student needs, and to promote equity and inclusion. Only a few studies to date have synthesized how PD programs improve teachers' content knowledge and instructional quality, as well as students' academic performance. In this…

This research study conducted a meta-analysis to integrate the studies that investigated the effectiveness of project-based learning on academic achievement based on a worldwide higher-education population. The researcher explored the variables that previous meta-analysis studies used to evaluate academic achievements, such as student grade point…

This study adopted a meta-analysis to explore the effectiveness of unplugged activities (UA) and programming exercises (PE) teaching approaches on computational thinking (CT) education. Through a two-stage literature collection and selection process, 29 articles were included in the meta-analysis, 31 independent effect sizes (16 of UA and 15 of…

This archival small-study meta-analysis was an examination of the across-study and in-study effects of functional behavioral assessment--based interventions on time-on-task for students with or at risk of emotional disturbance (ED)/emotional behavioral disorder (EBD). A sample of 15 across-study K-6 learners (11 males, 4 females; ages 5-13) was…

The involvement load hypothesis (ILH) was designed to predict the effectiveness of instructional tasks for incidental L2 vocabulary learning. In this meta-analysis we examined 398 effect sizes from 42 empirical studies (N = 4,628) to explore (a) the overall predictive ability of the ILH, (b) the relative effects of different components of the ILH…

From an early age, most children choose to play with toys typed to their own gender. In order to identify variables that predict toy preference, we conducted a meta-analysis of observational studies of the free selection of toys by boys and girls aged between 1 and 8 years. From an initial pool of 1788 papers, 16 studies (787 boys and 813 girls)…

The American educational system currently yields disappointing levels of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) engagement and achievement among students. One way to remedy this may be to increase children's motivation in STEM from an early age. This study examined whether a social cue--being part of an experimental "minimal…

This meta-analysis examined studies reporting on randomized controlled trials of the use of cognitive-behavioral approaches to intervention for children with autism spectrum disorder. Ten studies involving 402 children were located. The majority of the participants (mean age of 10.5 years) were high functioning, and all full-scale IQ scores…

Physical activity is associated with numerous health benefits in youth; however, these benefits could extend further than health, into education. Our aim was to systematically review and combine in meta-analyses evidence concerning the association between physical activity and the dimensions of school engagement, including behavior (e.g.,…

Multimedia integration signals highlight correspondences between text and pictures with the aim of supporting learning from multimedia. A recent meta-analysis revealed that only learners with low domain-specific prior knowledge benefit from multimedia integration signals. To more thoroughly investigate the influence of prior knowledge on the…

REL Appalachia conducted a systematic review of the research evidence on the effects of increased learning time. After screening more than 7,000 studies, REL Appalachia identified 30 that met the most rigorous standards for research. A review of those 30 studies found that increased learning time does not always produce positive results. However,…

Digital games were reviewed as an emerging tool in educational technology. Factors such as instructional effectiveness, time on task, relationship to curricula, student socio-economic status, violence in games, and game mechanics were considered. Despite considerable variability among studies, larger overall effect sizes for the impact of games on…

This meta-analytic study provides a systematic statistical synthesis of the effects of output tasks on second or foreign incidental vocabulary learning. A total of 12 studies were included in this meta-analysis. Five mediator variables were examined: design quality, types of output task, time on task, genres of text, and text-target word ratios.…

Currently, an increasing number of educational institutions are redefining second/foreign language (L2) classrooms by enhancing--or even replacing--traditional face-to-face (FTF) instruction with computer-assisted language learning (CALL). However, are these curricular decisions supported by research? Overall, a cursory review of empirical studies…