This dissertation is guided by my driving research question: what works for whom in education and why? I examine issues of instruction, assessment, and research approaches that begin to answer this question. Study 1 examines a classroom intervention's child x instruction interactions. Study 2 examines underlying cognitive factors, including…

This study examined the writing score and writing feature changes of 562 repeat test takers who took the Canadian English Language Proficiency Index Program--General (CELPIP--General) test at least three times, with a short (30-40 day) interval between the first and second attempts and a longer (90-180 day) interval between the first and third…

This ethnographic case study focused on a transnational education programme in an inner city in Mainland China that used both Chinese high school curriculum and Canadian provincial curriculum from New Brunswick. The goal of the study was to capture the desires and power relations that shaped literacy and identity options in the school's hybrid…

This study aims to evaluate the systems of transition to secondary education that have been practiced in Turkey to place students to secondary education institutions and to put forth to what degree these systems conform with the goals in Ministry of National Education (MoNE) 2023 Vision Document. In the study, the lessons in the systems of…

Despite the efforts of parents, educators, and activists to oppose standardized testing through the act of opting out, most states and federal law still require students to take annual standardized tests. While key arguments of the opt-out movement in a state legislative process are explored, this case study focuses on those legislators who…

The current experiment is a systematic replication of previous studies that evaluated the efficiency of echoic and tact prompts on the acquisition of intraverbals (i.e., French-to-English translations) following exposure to each prompt type. We extended these studies by (a) evaluating participants' language skills on standardized assessments, (b)…

This report estimates the effect of enrolling in a charter school on student standardized test scores in Newark, New Jersey. The results indicate that attending a Newark charter school that participated in the city's common enrollment system leads to large improvements in math and reading scores, and the effect is especially large for students who…

School leadership ranks as an essential factor for successful schools. The purpose of this study is therefore to investigate the effects of two central leadership practices -- "setting directions" and "managing instructional processes" -- on both instructional quality (mediator) and student achievement (target) in Austrian…

This study investigates the relationship among working memory (WM), mathematics, and language, with the aim of understanding: (1) whether the functions and capacities of WM components can predict achievement in language and mathematics; and (2) whether competence in the first language (L1) and achievement in mathematics can predict success in…

This research strives to enrich criminological and educational literature by providing a better understanding of relationships among school performance and achievement, attendance, and demographic information based upon the number of exclusionary disciplinary actions within public high schools. Using data on 409 traditional high schools from the…

More than half a century of educational efforts have focused on eliminating the Black--White achievement gap. Yet, racial disparities persist. In this article, we describe the issues with educational discourse focused on the achievement gap and the ways structural racism drives the educational experiences and outcomes of Black students. We include…

Schools are encountering a unique problem regarding how to best accommodate the increasing number of active bilingual learners/users of English (ABLE) students on state achievement tests. Previously, states used disability focused rather than language responsive accommodations for these students. The current study employed double-coding procedures…

In this study, we validated the "ReadFree tool", a computerised battery of 12 visual and auditory tasks developed to identify poor readers also in minority-language children (MLC). We tested the task-specific discriminant power on 142 Italian-monolingual participants (8-13 years old) divided into monolingual poor readers (N = 37) and…

This mixed-methods study examines how 15 preservice teachers' self-regulated learning (SRL) skills relate to their ICC development in a teacher education course. ICC was assessed using a standardised exam and an open-ended cultural dilemma. Participants' SRL was assessed along 7 dimensions: planning, goal orientation, task strategies,…

This study evaluated EFL Teachers' Perceptions and Experiences on Cambridge Young Learners (YLE) Exams. The study aims to investigate Turkish EFL teachers' perceptions of the general implementation process of Cambridge YLE Exams and their knowledge, experience, and institutional expertise on these tests. A qualitative research design was utilized…