This review documents the learning disabilities (LD) identification criteria and procedures utilized in empirical research including students with LD published from 2001 to 2013 in three journals dedicated to the study of LD. Results reveal several troublesome findings related to transparency in reporting and the coherence of the LD construct.…

Replicating previously reported empirical research is a necessary aspect of an evidence-based field of special education, but little formal investigation into the prevalence of replication research in the special education research literature has been conducted. Various factors may explain the lack of attention to replication of special education…

Action research began as an ambitious epistemological and social intervention. As the concept has become reified, packaged for methodology textbooks and professional development workshops, it has degenerated into a cure that may be worse than the disease. The point is not the trivial one that action research, like any practice, sometimes shows up…

This article reflects on the specific challenges facing teaching assistants (TAs) when managing behaviour. It considers the variety of existing research into this area, and why the paucity of specific research is problematic. It discusses how difficulties in access to training, its availability, the levels of preparation for lessons, the lack of…

This paper presents best practices for conducting survey research using Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk). Readers will learn the benefits, limitations, and trade-offs of using MTurk as compared to other recruitment services, including SurveyMonkey and Qualtrics. A synthesis of survey design guidelines along with a sample survey are presented to help…

Many practitioner researchers strive to understand which assessment practices have the best impact on learning, but in authentic educational settings, it can be difficult to determine whether one intervention, for example the introduction of an online quiz to a course studied by diverse students, is responsible for the observed effect. This paper…

This brief paper introduces a new approach to assessing the trustworthiness of research comparisons when expressed numerically. The 'number needed to disturb' a research finding would be the number of counterfactual values that can be added to the smallest arm of any comparison before the difference or 'effect' size disappears, minus the number of…

On October 14, 2016, the National Center for Special Education Research (NCSER) and the National Center for Education Research (NCER) in the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) convened a group of experts to gain insights and advice on how best to support the advancement of evidence beyond an efficacy study. Discussion followed five topics of…

School practitioners and educators are frequently challenged by the diverse and pervasive academic and behavioral needs of children at risk for and with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). This paper examines the outcome literature on self-regulated learning (SRL) interventions for youth with ADHD by systematically reviewing the key…

Postgraduate research students often experience various problems during the course of their programmes which hamper the timely completion of the MPhil/PhD and full doctoral (PhD) programmes. However, there is limited documented information on these barriers among Nigerian postgraduate students in Nigeria. This study was conducted to assess the…

The present study aims to identify the most significant roles of the invisible web in improving academic research and the main obstacles and challenges facing the use of the invisible web in improving academic research from the perspective of academics in Saudi universities. The descriptive analytical approach was utilized in this study. It…

This commentary revisits compelling arguments put forth by the contributors to this special issue on the role of race and ethnicity in academic motivation research. First, an overview of how race and motivation have been positioned in prominent theories of motivation is provided and juxtaposed with those offered in culturally responsive…

Identifying effective literacy interventions for teachers of very young children is important, but it is not easy. In this case study, we share our experiences implementing a quasi-experimental evaluation of an early literacy program. We describe the design and context of the study and discuss three key issues that we encountered with data…

Assessment of the impact of varied forms of participatory research is enhanced by specific attention to the ripples, such work initiates in the social context. Ripples are defined as consequences either unintended or unanticipated by those carrying out the participatory research. Following a brief documentation of the range of reported ripples in…

Van Gog and Sweller (2015) claim that there is no testing effect--no benefit of practicing retrieval--for complex materials. We show that this claim is incorrect on several grounds. First, Van Gog and Sweller's idea of "element interactivity" is not defined in a quantitative, measurable way. As a consequence, the idea is applied…