This research brief provides an overview of methods for estimating the size of achievement gaps. Unfortunately many researchers, analysts, and policy-makers use subjective methods (e.g., visual inspection) to evaluate group differences. Another common method is to take the difference between groups in percent proficient, but there are a number of…

Throughout the different phases of a drug development program, randomized trials are used to establish the tolerability, safety and efficacy of a candidate drug. At each stage one aims to optimize the design of future studies by extrapolation from the available evidence at the time. This includes collected trial data and relevant external data.…

Statisticians have made great progress in creating methods that reduce our reliance on parametric assumptions. However this explosion in research has resulted in a breadth of inferential strategies that both create opportunities for more reliable inference as well as complicate the choices that an applied researcher has to make and defend.…

The Monte Carlo method is one of the basic simulation statistical methods which can be used both to demonstrate basic probability and statistical concepts as well as to analyse the behaviour stochastic models. The introduction part of the article provides a brief description of the Monte Carlo method. The main part of the article is concentrated…

We propose that by more closely aligning interdisciplinary work in (a) numeracy education for medication dosage calculations and (b) model-driven design for medical devices that are used for delivery of medication we may help address the incident-rate in incorrect medication calculations and delivery, given that such devices commonly require the…

Group work, where students work on projects to overcome challenges together, has numerous advantages, including learning of important transferable skills, better learning experience and increased motivation. However, in many academic systems the advantages of group projects clash with the need to assign individualised marks to students. A number…

Education experiments frequently assign students to treatment or control conditions within schools. Longitudinal components added in these studies (e.g., students followed over time) allow researchers to assess treatment effects in average rates of change (e.g., linear or quadratic). We provide methods for a priori power analysis in three-level…

Mental calculation is an important competence in everyday life, and it is essential especially for a future primary school teacher. In this research the efficacy of different games, as didactic games, board-games, and mobile games for developing mental calculation skills were studied. The results shows that didactic games and board-games were…

In this paper we present two simulations designed with GeoGebra that illustrate dynamically a key concept in Vector Calculus: line integrals of vector fields, along with other associated mathematical properties and applications. Students are not required to know the GeoGebra environment: a user-friendly interface with buttons, functionalities and…

Building on prior research on the relationships between key concepts in item response theory and classical test theory, this note contributes to highlighting their important and useful links. A readily and widely applicable latent variable modeling procedure is discussed that can be used for point and interval estimation of the individual person…

The goal of this paper is to promote the use of R and Python as high-level, free, open-source programming environments that can be used as a computational and visualization tool for teaching differential equations. Both R and Python also allow for creating reproducible dynamic documents using Markdown, which combines live code, plain text, and…

One major aim of international large-scale assessments (ILSAs) is to monitor changes in student performance over time. To accomplish this task, a set of common items is repeatedly administered in each assessment and linking methods are used to align the results from the different assessments on a common scale. The present article introduces a…

Purpose: This study aims to explore the effects of an alternative learning environment, such as the video game making (VGM) within science content, on computational thinking (CT) skills development and student performance. Design/methodology/approach: A didactic intervention was performed for five weeks. Two student groups were taught the same…

Fractals are geometric objects used to describe irregular shapes that have a fractional dimension and commonly appear in nature. Although several proposals for the study of perfect fractals at the basic level are present in the literature, only few proposals for the study of real fractals exist, which does not seem reasonable considering the…

Felix Klein's Erlangen program classifies geometries based on the kinds of geometric transformations that preserve key properties of their figures, rather than focusing on the geometric figures themselves. This shift in perspective, from figurative to operative, fits Piaget's characterization of mathematical development. This paper considers how…