Effect sizes are commonly reported for the results of educational interventions. However, researchers struggle with interpreting their magnitude in a way that transcends generic guidelines. Effect sizes can be interpreted in a meaningful context by benchmarking them against typical growth for students in the normative distribution. Such benchmarks…

The essential function of critical thinking in education is obvious by many studies done in this field. The main purpose of this article is to find the relationship between critical thinking levels of Iranian EFL learners and their performance on different modes of writing. The sample of the study selected among those who studying English at the…

Investigations of early vocabulary production often employ a single method to measure children's word use. This study examined expressive vocabulary development in children aged 1;0-2;6 years through a combination of picture naming, caregiver report and language sampling. The participants were predominantly exposed to Maltese at home, with…

Typically a longitudinal growth modeling based on item response theory (IRT) requires repeated measures data from a single group with the same test design. If operational or item exposure problems are present, the same test may not be employed to collect data for longitudinal analyses and tests at multiple time points are constructed with unique…

This study applies the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) to increase understanding about dishonest academic behaviour amongst undergraduate business students. A total of 579 respondents from three universities in South Africa completed an online survey about their beliefs regarding academic dishonesty, their intentions to engage in dishonest…

Interest in variation in program impacts--How big is it? What might explain it?--has inspired recent work on the analysis of data from multi-site experiments. One critical aspect of this problem involves the use of random or fixed effect estimates to visualize the distribution of impact estimates across a sample of sites. Unfortunately, unless the…

Under Part B of the "Individuals with Disabilities Education Act" ("IDEA"), states must collect and examine data to determine whether significant disproportionality on the basis of race and ethnicity is occurring in the state, or its school districts, with respect to the identification, placement, and discipline of students…

The purpose of this study was to inform the deliberations of a policymakers' working group by investigating what key actors in the materials' marketplace are doing to align digital and print-based materials with the Australian Curriculum and what steps need to be taken to deliver aligned materials to schools. Content analysis method was used to…

For many students meeting, say, the gamma distribution for the first time, it may well turn out to be a rather fruitless encounter unless they are immediately able to see an application of this probability model to some real-life situation. With this in mind, we pose here an appealing problem that can be used as the basis for a workshop activity…

Problem Statement: Creation of a common culture in educational organizations, particularly in schools, depends first on the presence and cohesiveness of an interacting group of individuals. Individual aims are more likely to turn into a shared objective in schools with a strong, participatory culture. Culture shared by all school stakeholders…

Recognizing the differences between three discrete distributions (Binomial, Hypergeometric and Negative Binomial) can be challenging for students. We present an activity designed to help students differentiate among these distributions. In addition, we present assessment results in the form of pre- and post-tests that were designed to assess the…

Education systems in third world countries are grappling with high enrolments of children in schools, amidst dwindling resources. In this article, the authors question whether learning/teaching materials influence learning outcomes in a context where policy is more concerned about enrolment than quality of service. This article is drawn from data…

This study considered the adequacy of references used by children to introduce, maintain, and reintroduce characters in complex narratives involving multiple characters. Sixty-three English-speaking Canadian children from kindergarten to second grade (M age 7.0 years) told two multi-episode stories from wordless picture books. Analyses considered…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of inquiry-based learning method on students' academic achievement in sciences lesson. A total of 40 fifth grade students from two different classes were involved in the study. They were selected through purposive sampling method. The group which was assigned as experimental group was…

Many tests used in educational settings to identify learning difficulties endeavour to pick up only the lowest performers. Yet these tests are generally developed within a Classical Test Theory (CTT) paradigm that assumes that data do not have significant skew. Rasch analysis is more tolerant of skew and was used to validate two newly developed…