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Nationally published research suggests middle and high school educators are often experts within their respective disciplines, but they may be unprepared to effectively consider literacy needs and ...

Purpose: We examine considerations regarding the positive contributions of evidence accountability and challenges that frustrate educators in gaining access to the needed product information. Design/Approach/Methods: We review the research literature on the multiple characteristics of evidence relative to consumer (practitioner) interests. We then examine, through a “case illustration” of an initiative in a large school district, a second challenge for evidence usage—conducting viable studies and interpreting outcomes from comprehensive interventions in complex educational systems. Findings: Despite attention being given to rigorous evidence, consumers report preferring peer recommendations and local pilot studies as sources. In our case illustration, we found that the availability of evidence from comprehensive formative evaluation studies was viewed by stakeholders as positively contributing to program implementation quality and sustainability over time. Originality/Value: We use a real-world “case illustration” of a complex initiative in a large, diverse school district to illustrate how current policies and expectations regarding evidence support for educational programs is filtered through multiple agendas and personal needs of key stakeholders. Consequently, evaluators acquire nontraditional roles that go beyond routine execution of rigorous studies. Given these factors, we offer recommendations for fostering more meaningful and objective interpretations and usage of evidence by local stakeholders.

Rigorous evidence of program effectiveness has become increasingly important with the 2015 passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). One question that has not yet been fully explored is whe...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine how participants in diverse schools newly implement the Sanford Harmony social and emotional learning (SEL) program and perceive its benefits for students and overall school climate. Design/methodology/approach The current study employed a convergent parallel mixed-methods design with a sample of five elementary schools in the western USA. Measures included classroom observations, administrator interviews, teacher interviews and focus groups, student focus groups, and a teacher questionnaire. Findings Findings indicated expected variation in implementation across schools, although all participants reacted favorably to the program and, importantly, would recommend the program to others. Administrators, teachers and students all saw the value of the program, particularly in terms of student relationship building and improved school climate. Implementation challenges experienced by schools were consistent with research on diffusion of innovations. Practical implications The present study demonstrates the importance of effective professional development, continued support, collective decision making and intentional integration of the SEL program throughout a school to support robust implementation and ultimately achieve intended outcomes. Originality/value Researchers have yet to examine in-depth implementation of the Sanford Harmony program and how best to support scale-up and more intentional implementation in schools. As implementation fidelity is a key component of a program achieving intended outcomes, the findings from the present study contribute to the knowledge base of supporting SEL program implementation.

School districts are adopting educational technology products at an increasing rate over the years. As more and more products become available, school districts face the challenge of identifying and evaluating programs to meet students’ needs, while ed-tech providers compete for access to decision makers. The present mixed methods study sought to document the process by which school districts discover, evaluate, and acquire ed-tech products and how vendors market and work through this process with districts. Participants included district stakeholders representing 54 school districts and vendors from 47 ed-tech companies. Results indicated that, in contrast to best practices, needs assessments were rarely, if at all conducted, districts and vendors lack a central source of information for product information and evidence of effectiveness, and decisions are often made on small-scale pilot tryouts, peer references, and less often by examining rigorous evaluation evidence. Based on these findings, we offer recommendations for both district and vendor stakeholders to encourage successful procurement of ed-tech products.

This study examined the incorporation of generative strategies for the guided discovery of physics principles in a simulation. Participants who either paraphrased or predicted and self-explained guided discovery assignments exhibited improved performance on an achievement test as compared to a control group. Calibration accuracy (the correspondence between judgments of performance and actual performance) was also improved for the two generative strategy groups. The thoroughness of generative content and quality of self-explanations significantly predicted test performance. In regards to cognitive load, participants who predicted and self-explained reported significantly higher levels of mental effort, decreased levels of confidence, and higher levels of frustration compared to those in other treatments. The improvement in learning by the two generative strategy groups is consistent with the generative model of learning describing the importance of knowledge construction.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of redundancy when learning from realistic science materials. Participants received instruction where redundancy was manipulated between text and diagrams with captions, text and diagrams, and text only. Participants reported levels of cognitive load, responded to questionnaire items and completed an achievement test. Findings indicated there were no significant differences in perceived mental effort between groups, though there were differences in experienced material difficulty. In contrast with the redundancy effect described by cognitive load theory, the manipulation of redundancy in lengthier text materials paired with diagrams did not affect performance on the achievement test. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a paper published 25 years ago, Ross and Morrison (Educ Technol Res Dev 37(1):19–33, 1989) called for a “happy medium” in educational technology research, to be achieved by balancing high rigor of studies (internal validity) with relevance to real-world applications (external validity). In this paper, we argue that, although contemporary research orientations have made substantial strides in capturing these two features, success in combining them and achieving the happy medium envisioned remains limited and disappointing. Highly prevalent today are (a) “technology effects studies,” which are strong in rigor but continue to view educational technology (ET) as a “treatment” rather than as a mode for delivering and potentially enhancing treatments; and (b) “surface learning studies,” which examine processes and outcomes of realistic ET applications, but often without including meaningful measures of student learning. To promote studies that more successfully bridge research and practice, we present suggestions and positive examples for finally achieving a happy medium in this “Phase II” quest.