Research Findings: The National Association for the Education of Young Children's guidelines for developmentally appropriate practices (DAP) have been imported and researched by others across the globe. A central issue that has arisen for these international early childhood educators is whether these best practices are sensitive to the…

Factors, such as treatment complexity and duration, language proficiency, and educational context (EFL vs. ESL), can significantly influence language performance in experimental studies. The purpose of the present meta-analysis is to investigate the degree to which these causal factors influence linguistic improvement in studies of the English…

As digital technologies permeate every aspect of our lives, the complexity of the educational settings, and of the technological support we use within them, unceasingly rises. This increased complexity, along with the need for educational practitioners to apply such technologies within multi-constraint authentic settings, has given rise to the…

The author conducted a content analysis of papers submitted to the journal, "Communications in Information Literacy," from the years 2007-2013. The purpose was to investigate and report on the overall quality characteristics of a statistically significant sample of papers submitted to a single-topic, open access, library and information…

Although feedback has been identified as a key instructional feature in simulation based medical education (SBME), we remain uncertain as to the magnitude of its effectiveness and the mechanisms by which it may be effective. We employed a meta-analysis and critical narrative synthesis to examine the effectiveness of feedback for SBME procedural…

Objectives: To assess the effectiveness of patient education in reducing falls, promoting behavioural change and the uptake of prevention activities in older adults during and after hospitalization. Design: Systematic review and meta-analysis. Methods: A systematic search of five health science databases was performed up to November 2012. Studies…

We performed a systematic literature search regarding maternal diabetes before and during pregnancy and the risk of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) in the offspring. Of the 178 potentially relevant articles, 12 articles including three cohort studies and nine case-control studies were included in the meta-analysis. Both the meta-analyses of cohort…

A fundamental goal of student learning outcomes assessment in higher education is to use student learning evidence in decision making to improve educational programs. Such use of assessment findings, however, is atypical. This article argues that a narrow conception of use contributes to this conclusion and an accurate appraisal of the…

The identification of evidence-based practices continues to provoke issues of disagreement across multiple fields. One area of contention is the role of single-subject design (SSD) research in providing scientific evidence. The debate about SSD's utility centers on three issues: sample size, effect size, and serial dependence. One potential…

Background: The efficacy of three dietary treatments for ADHD has been repeatedly tested in randomized controlled trials (RCTs). These interventions are restricted elimination diets (RED), artificial food colour elimination (AFCE) and supplementation with free fatty acids (SFFA). There have been three systematic reviews and associated…

Comprehension is the essence of reading. Finding appropriate and effective reading strategies to support students' reading comprehension has always been a critical issue for educators. This article presents findings from a meta-analysis of 17 studies of metacognitive strategy instruction on students' reading comprehension in computerized…

Clinical Question: What treatment approaches are available to reduce the frequency of phonological processes and disfluencies (moments of stuttering or stuttered words or syllables) in a school-aged child with a phonological disorder (PD) and an additional stuttering disorder (SD)? Additionally, what is the treatment efficacy of available…

Past research suggests that task conflict may improve team performance under certain conditions; however, we know little about these specific conditions. On the basis of prior theory and research on conflict in teams, we argue that a climate of psychological safety is one specific context under which task conflict will improve team performance.…

The effectiveness of different interventions for challenging behavior (CB) in persons with intellectual disabilities (ID) was reviewed by means of a two-phase study. First, a systematic review of 137 meta-analyses and reviews on group-study interventions for CB in persons with ID was conducted. Based on this review, hypotheses concerning the…

In their critique of Kingston and Nash (2011), Briggs, Ruiz-Primo, Furtak, Shepard, and Yin (2012) make several major points. First, Kingston and Nash's conclusions about the state of research on the efficacy of formative assessment are similar to other researchers, "including some of the authors." Second, their research may be unique in that they…