One goal of professional development is to improve student achievement through improved teacher practice. The middle school philosophy, which supports the rationale that student learning is inextricably interwoven into the fabric of an active learning environment, contains many promising practices that "mirror" what is often considered to be high…

Cooperative learning is in many ways a more effective learning method than individual and competitive learning. In this study, the effects of cooperative learning on the abilities of the preservice art teacher candidates to plan lessons were emphasized. For this purpose, 32 art teacher candidates were selected for the experimental group, and 32…

Orton-Gillingham (OG) and Orton-Gillingham-based reading instructional programs are commonly implemented reading programs in the United States. Twelve studies that employed quasi-experimental or experimental designs are reviewed. These studies included elementary students, adolescents, and college students. Of the 12 studies, 5 reported that the…

This article explores the effectiveness of writing to help nurse-learners develop critical thinking in an asynchronous, online learning environment. The formal written assignments of students in an online nursing health assessment program were analyzed for evidence of critical thinking according to Johns' Model of Structured Reflection (Johns,…

Evaluating the effects of interventions is among the most critical issues faced by the field of human resource development today. This study addresses the potential of multisource feedback for training evaluation. The central research question is whether or not it is possible to measure change in work behavior, as a result of training, with…

Simulations are widely viewed to be effective pedagogical tools; however, evidence concerning their effects on student learning has been largely anecdotal or unsystematic in nature. In addition, most of the literature focuses on fairly complex simulations that require more class time and demand more of students than may be possible in many…

This study aims at understanding how the use of different reading activities affects readers' comprehension of short stories. Forty-seven students with an advanced level of English proficiency participated in the study where a quasi-experimental research design was pursued. The experimental and control groups of students completed different sets…

To provide the first interstate quasi-experimental assessment on the power of content integration in building reading skills, the authors studied the effects on reading comprehension of GeoLiteracy--a K-8 package of 85 lessons that teaches geography in the context of practicing reading and writing skills. Ninety-six third through eighth grade…

Counseling psychology is a relatively new field that is gaining autonomy and respect. Unfortunately, research efforts in the field may lack an appropriate research design. This paper considers some of the more common types of research design and the associated threats to their validity. An example of each design type is drawn from the counseling…

With an emphasis on the problems of control of extraneous variables and threats to internal and external validity, the arrangement or design of experiments is discussed. The purpose of experimentation in an educational institution, and the principles governing true experimentation (randomization, replication, and control) are presented, as are…

Path analysis was used to reevaluate the analysis of covariance quasiexperimental study of the effectiveness of the Head Start program. Contrary to the original analysis, the alternative approach yields small positive estimates of effect. (Author/CTM)

A model is described which illustrates two general uses of multiple analyses to evaluate quasi-experiments: obtaining estimates of the treatment effect, and checking the validity of the experiment. (MH)

Purpose: Our purpose in the current study was to examine the relationship between health services utilization delivered by means of the Homeless Outreach Medical Services (HOMES) program and health services utilization delivered by means of the Parkland emergency room and inpatient units among a sample of older and younger homeless adults being…

This paper reports a study that used a quasi-experimental design to examine if a career intervention designed to increase self-knowledge enabled self-discovery or self-construction, determined by the structure of the personality inventory used. This study, situated within the theoretical model of Markus's research in self-schemata (1977), used…

The focus of this study is to demonstrate and discuss the educational advantages of Computer Assisted Instruction (CAI). A quasi-experimental design compared learning outcomes of participants in an introductory statistics course that integrated CAI to participants in a Lecture-only introductory statistics course. Reviews of participants' identical…