ÐÜèÊÓÆµAnnounces Most Read Education Research Articles of 2015

ÐÜèÊÓÆµ

ÐÜèÊÓÆµAnnounces Most Read Education Research Articles of 2015
 
Print

For Immediate Release:
February 10, 2016

Contact:
Tony Pals, tpals@aera.net
(202) 238-3235 (office), (202) 288-9333 (cell)

Victoria Oms, voms@aera.net
(202) 238-3233 (office)

ÐÜèÊÓÆµAnnounces Most Read Education Research Articles of 2015

WASHINGTON, D.C., February 10– Research on special education, non-cognitive skills, degree completion, educational inequality and more appeared in the 10 most popular journal articles published by the ÐÜèÊÓÆµ in 2015. Based on the number of times they were accessed online, the following were the most popular ÐÜèÊÓÆµresearch articles published in 2015.

(Full articles can be accessed at no cost through the links below. All files are PDF.)


  1. A federally funded study found that racial, ethnic, and language minority students in elementary and middle school are less likely than otherwise similar white, native-English-speaking children to be identified as having disabilities and, as a result, are disproportionately underrepresented in special education.
    Educational Researcher, June/July 2015
    Paul L. Morgan, George Farkas, Marianne M. Hillemeier, Richard Mattison, Steve Maczuga, Hui Li, Michael Cook


  2. The authors advise policymakers and practitioners to move cautiously before using existing measures to evaluate educators, programs, and policies, or diagnosing children as having “noncognitive” deficits.
    Educational Researcher, May 2015
    Angela L. Duckworth, David Scott Yeager


  3. Researchers offer justification for including nonacademic outcome measures in longitudinal surveys that assess educational progress and success.
    ÐÜèÊÓÆµOpen, April-June 2015
    Kristin Anderson Moore, Laura H. Lippman, Renee Ryberg


  4. A federally funded meta-analysis of 25 years’ worth of research found no conclusive evidence that developing students’ executive function skills leads to better academic performance.
    Review of Educational Research, December 2015
    Robin Jacob, Julia Parkinson


  5. Study findings indicate that unequal access to rigorous mathematics content is widening the gap in performance on a prominent international math literacy test between low- and high-income students, not only in the United States but in countries worldwide.
    Educational Researcher, October 2015
    William H. Schmidt, Nathan A. Burroughs, Pablo Zoido, Richard T. Houang


  6. Research found that discrepancies in BA attainment between undergraduates at community colleges and 4-year colleges may be partially explained by community college students’ falling behind in credit accumulation during their third year.
    Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, March 2015
    David B. Monaghan, Paul Attewell


  7. The authors estimate that the overall effect of college on critical thinking skills is comparable to moving a student who starts at the 50th percentile to the 72nd percentile by the end of 4 years.
    Review of Educational Research, September 2015
    Christopher R. Huber, Nathan R. Kuncel


  8. A nationally representative study of siblings supports previously published research on unrelated individuals that links specific genotypes to educational attainment among adults in their mid-20s to early 30s.
    ÐÜèÊÓÆµOpen, July-September 2015
    Benjamin W. Domingue, Daniel W. Belsky, Dalton Conley, Kathleen Mullan Harris, Jason D. Boardman


  9. Research found that access to state-supported early childhood programs significantly reduces the likelihood that children will be placed in special education in the third grade, academically benefiting students and resulting in considerable cost savings to school districts.
    Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, February 2015
    Clara G. Muschkin, Helen F. Ladd, Kenneth A. Dodge


  10. A meta-analysis on the effects of technology-enhanced stories for children’s literacy development found that animated pictures, music, and sound effects improved story comprehension and vocabulary, while interactive elements were distracting.
    Review of Educational Research, December 2015
    Zsofia K. Takacs, Elise K. Swart, Adriana G. Bus

In addition to the preceding list of the top 10 articles, ÐÜèÊÓÆµalso announced the top 10 articles accessed for each of the association's seven peer-reviewed journals. Those can be viewed below.

Browse Most Read Articles by Journal:

ÐÜèÊÓÆµOpen


  1. Researchers offer justification for including nonacademic outcome measures in longitudinal surveys that assess educational progress and success.
    Kristin Anderson Moore, Laura H. Lippman, Renee Ryberg


  2. A nationally representative study of siblings supports previously published research on unrelated individuals that links specific genotypes to educational attainment among adults in their mid-20s to early 30s.
    ÐÜèÊÓÆµOpen, July-September 2015
    Benjamin W. Domingue, Daniel W. Belsky, Dalton Conley, Kathleen Mullan Harris, Jason D. Boardman


  3. This study examines the psychometric properties of two assessments of children’s approaches to learning: the Devereux Early Childhood Assessment (DECA) and a 13-item approach to learning rating scale (AtL) derived from the Arizona Early Learning Standards (AELS).
    ÐÜèÊÓÆµOpen, July-September 2015
    Otilia C. Barbu, David B. Yaden Jr., Deborah Levine-Donnerstein, Ronald W. Marx


  4. This study used population-level data from one state, over several years, to find that the practice of academic redshirting, or holding children back a year prior to enrolling in kindergarten, is trending downward.
    ÐÜèÊÓÆµOpen, April-June 2015
    Francis L. Huang


  5. The author argues that the designs of NCES’s collection of longitudinal student surveys are not useful for many analytic purposes.
    ÐÜèÊÓÆµOpen, April-June 2015
    John Robert Warren


  6. In this article, a social-ecological framework is briefly described as a way to understand bullying and school violence. Data that assess bullying and/or school violence are described, and recommendations for additional items are proposed.
    ÐÜèÊÓÆµOpen, July-September 2015
    Dorothy Espelage


  7. Assignment to social-emotional learning programs improved low-income kindergarten and first-grade students’ math and reading achievement by first enhancing classroom emotional support and organization.
    ÐÜèÊÓÆµOpen, July-September 2015
    Meghan P. McCormick, Elise Cappella, Erin E. O’Connor, Sandee G. McClowry


  8. Authors found that, on average, teacher performance during their first 5 years of teaching is predictive of future performance, particularly in math.
    ÐÜèÊÓÆµOpen, October-December 2015
    Allison Atteberry, Susanna Loeb, James Wyckoff


  9. Beginning with an overview of the conceptual underpinnings related to measuring contexts, the author describes issues in measuring school contexts with an eye toward understanding students’ experiences and outcomes, briefly describes the initiatives at the National Center for Education Statistics to measure school contexts, and discusses new approaches and opportunities for measurement.
    ÐÜèÊÓÆµOpen, October-December 2015
    Chandra L. Muller


  10. Authors found a positive interaction between teaching quality and state pre-K exposure through comparing student-level data from a statewide pre-K experiment with records of teacher observation scores.
    ÐÜèÊÓÆµOpen, October-December 2015
    Walker A. Swain, Matthew G. Springer, Kerry G. Hofer

American Educational Research Journal


  1. This study draws upon survey and administrative data on over 9,000 teachers in Miami-Dade County public schools over 2 years to investigate the kinds of collaborations that exist in instructional teams across the district and whether these collaborations predict student achievement.
    American Educational Research Journal, June 2015
    Matthew Ronfeldt, Susanna Owens Farmer, Kiel McQueen, Jason A. Grissom


  2. In this comparative case study, authors examine the learning opportunities afforded by teachers’ data use conversations using situated discourse analysis to compare two middle school mathematics teacher workgroups interpreting data from the same district assessment.
    American Educational Research Journal, April 2015
    Ilana Seidel Horn, Britnie Delinger Kane, Jonee Wilson


  3. This article draws on in-depth interviews and focus group data to examine the mentoring experiences of 58 underrepresented minority (URM) faculty to increase the retention of URM faculty.
    American Educational Research Journal, February 2015
    Ruth Enid Zambrana, Rashawn Ray, Michelle M. Espino, Corinne Castro, Beth Douthirt Cohen, Jennifer Eliason


  4. This case study investigated internally constructed and externally imposed contextual elements that constrained or facilitated the use of formative assessment by three high school science teachers.
    American Educational Research Journal, October 2015
    Cathy Box, Gerald Skoog, Jennifer M. Dabbs


  5. This quasi-experimental investigation of the academic attitudes and achievement among 11th-grade low-income students of color enrolled in nonselective, public single-sex and mixed-sex high schools reported significantly more negative attitudes about English/reading in comparison with students in mixed-sex schools, while there were no differences in math or science attitudes.
    American Educational Research Journal, August 2015
    Nicole M. Else-Quest, Oana Peterca


  6. This study investigates the effectiveness of the Responsive Classroom approach, a social and emotional learning intervention, in changing the relations between mathematics teacher and classroom inputs and student mathematics achievement.
    American Educational Research Journal, August 2015
    Erin R. Ottmar, Sara E. Rimm-Kaufman, Ross A. Larsen, Robert Q. Berry


  7. Researchers examined the degree to which student characteristics, relevance, prior experience with massive open online courses (MOOC), self-reported commitment, and learners’ implicit theory of intelligence predicted retention and achievement. They found that learners’ expected investment, including level of commitment, expected number of hours devoted to the MOOC, and intention to obtain a certificate, related to retention likelihood.
    American Educational Research Journal, October 2015
    Jeffrey A. Greene, Christopher A. Oswald, Jeffrey Pomerantz


  8. Using data from the first 3 years of the Beginning Teacher Longitudinal Survey, the authors investigate the greater incidence of attrition among graduates of selective colleges and whether higher rates of attrition can be explained by measures of early career adjustment.
    American Educational Research Journal, August 2015
    Sean Kelly, Laura Northrop


  9. In the first analysis to investigate claims of alignment in the context of fourth-grade mathematics using tools capable of estimating the alignment of curriculum materials with the standards, results indicate areas of misalignment, including that the textbooks studied systematically overemphasize procedures and memorization relative to the standards, among other weaknesses.
    American Educational Research Journal, December 2015
    Morgan S. Polikoff


  10. This study examines the directionality of the associations among cognitive assets (IQ, academic achievement), motivational beliefs (academic self-concept, task values), and educational and occupational aspirations over time from late adolescence (Grade 10) into early adulthood (5 years post high school).
    American Educational Research Journal, April 2015
    Jiesi Guo, Herbert W. Marsh, Alexandre J. S. Morin, Philip D. Parker, Gurvinder Kaur

Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis


  1. Research found that access to state-supported early childhood programs significantly reduces the likelihood that children will be placed in special education in the third grade, academically benefiting students and resulting in considerable cost savings to school districts.
    Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, February 2015
    Clara G. Muschkin, Helen F. Ladd, Kenneth A. Dodge


  2. New research found that state higher education performance funding falls short of its intended goals of raising student retention and degree completion rates at community colleges.
    Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, December 2015
    Nicholas W. Hillman, David A. Tandberg, Alisa H. Fryar


  3. Researchers found that there was no causal relationship between school size and academic performance of fourth- and fifth-grade students in North Carolina, though socioeconomically disadvantaged students and students with learning disabilities were significantly harmed by school size.
    Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, May 2015
    Seth Gershenson, Laura Langbein


  4. A university professor and school district leader co-authored this examination of why more school districts and universities should develop research partnerships, why such partnerships are not more common, and how to overcome the obstacles.
    Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, May 2015
    Ruth N. López Turley, Carla Stevens


  5. Researchers discuss the challenges they face in developing specific research goals, building internal capacity for research, and working with external partners and identify research questions that cannot be addressed by state longitudinal data systems.
    Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, May 2015
    Carrie Conaway, Venessa Keesler, Nathaniel Schwartz


  6. Researchers share results from a long-standing research partnership with the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to illustrate the wide range of analyses that can be conducted using a state longitudinal data system. They document large income-based gaps in educational attainments, including high school graduation rates and college-going rates.
    Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, May 2015
    John P. Papay, Richard J. Murnane, John B. Willett


  7. This article explores the use of National Student Clearinghouse data to measure postsecondary outcomes, finding that coverage is highest among public institutions and lowest among for-profit colleges and lower for minority students.
    Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, May 2015
    Susan M. Dynarski, Steven W. Hemelt, Joshua M. Hyman


  8. The authors used student-level data covering all Arizona students from 2006 to 2012 to find that the performance of charter schools in Arizona in improving student achievement varied widely. On average, the charter schools were modestly less effective than traditional public schools in raising student achievement.
    Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, May 2015
    Matthew M. Chingos, Martin R. West


  9. Researchers found that a Wake County Public Schools policy of assigning middle school students to accelerated math and eighth-grade algebra based on a defined prior achievement metric reduced the relationship between course assignment and student characteristics and increased the share of students on track for algebra by eighth grade.
    Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, May 2015
    Shaun M. Dougherty, Joshua S. Goodman, Darryl V. Hill, Erica G. Litke, Lindsay C. Page


  10. This article examines the effects of a 2006 Ohio financial aid policy on first-year college persistence rates. The author estimates that dropout rates of students who benefited from the program fell by 2% and finds that the new program increased the likelihood that students would attend 4-year campuses and increased their first-year grade point averages.
    Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, May 2015
    Eric Bettinger

Educational Researcher


  1. A federally funded study found that racial, ethnic, and language minority elementary- and middle-school students are less likely than otherwise similar white, English-speaking children to be identified as having disabilities and, as a result, are disproportionately underrepresented in special education.
    Educational Researcher, June/July 2015
    Paul L. Morgan, George Farkas, Marianne M. Hillemeier, Richard Mattison, Steve Maczuga, Hui Li, Michael Cook


  2. The authors advise policymakers and practitioners to move cautiously before using existing measures to evaluate educators, programs, and policies, or diagnosing children as having “noncognitive” deficits.
    Educational Researcher, May 2015
    Angela L. Duckworth, David Scott Yeager


  3. Study findings indicate that unequal access to rigorous mathematics content is widening the gap in performance on a prominent international math literacy test between low- and high-income students, not only in the United States but in countries worldwide.
    Educational Researcher, October 2015
    William H. Schmidt, Nathan A. Burroughs, Pablo Zoido, Richard T. Houang


  4. The researchers examined a number of problems in the design and implementation of teacher evaluation systems that incorporate value-added measures.
    Educational Researcher, March 2015
    Dale Ballou, Matthew G. Springer


  5. This article synthesizes current research on bullying prevention and intervention to provide guidance to schools seeking to select and implement antibullying strategies.
    Educational Researcher, January/February 2015
    Nadia S. Ansary, Maurice J. Elias, Michael B. Greene, Stuart Green


  6. This commentary reflects on the five articles published in Educational Researcher’s special issue on value-added methods (VAMs) in light of other work in this field, offering the author’s own thoughts about whether and how VAMs may add value to teacher evaluation.
    Educational Researcher, March 2015
    Linda Darling-Hammond


  7. The author studied the productivity of the increasingly popular use of collaborative intellectual engagement in classrooms.
    Educational Researcher, January/February 2015
    Deanna Kuhn


  8. This article explores various mechanisms through which the use of value-added measures might affect teacher quality, describing what researchers know empirically about the potential of each mechanism.
    Educational Researcher, March 2015
    Dan Goldhaber


  9. This commentary questions a simplistic notion of how policymakers might make effective use of research by sketching how the various levels of the education hierarchy might collaborate, noting that in combination with a wide range of related research and a coherent theory of action, research on teacher effectiveness indicators can increase the potential for educational improvement.
    Educational Researcher, March 2015
    Stephen W. Raudenbush


  10. Research suggests that data generated by high-quality teacher observation systems allow principals to rely less on test scores to inform human capital decisions.
    Educational Researcher, March 2015
    Ellen Goldring, Jason A. Grissom, Mollie Rubin, Christine M. Neumerski, Marisa Cannata, Timothy Drake, Patrick Schuermann

Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics


  1. In this article, the author theoretically and empirically evaluates the impacts of preferring a fixed effects imputation model with dummies over a multilevel imputation model.
    Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, February 2015
    Jörg Drechsler


  2. In this article, researchers review the theory of Empirical Bayes’s (EB) estimation and use simulated and real student achievement data to study the ability of EB estimators to properly rank teachers. They find that EB estimators’ performance suffers under nonrandom teacher assignment.
    Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, April 2015
    Cassandra M. Guarino, Michelle Maxfield, Mark D. Reckase, Paul N. Thompson, Jeffrey M. Wooldridge


  3. Researchers extend previous work to obtain practical estimates of the imprecision resulting from the data-coarsening process and of the bias imparted by measurement error.
    Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, April 2015
    Sean F. Reardon, Andrew D. Ho


  4. Researchers link 29 administrations from a testing program via the method of pseudo-equivalent groups to compare the reasonableness of results from pseudo-equivalent groups to results from kernel equating.
    Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, June 2015
    Shelby J. Haberman


  5. The author developed an equating procedure for a testing program with evolving distribution of examinee profiles where no anchor is available because the original scoring scheme was based on expert judgment of the item difficulties and applies it to 2 years of testing.
    Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, June 2015
    Nicholas T. Longford


  6. In this article, researchers use Bayes modal estimation to obtain positive definite covariance matrix estimates and recommend a class of Wishart (not inverse-Wishart) priors for S with a default choice of hyperparameters.
    Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, April 2015
    Yeojin Chung, Andrew Gelman, Sophia Rabe-Hesketh, Jingchen Liu, Vincent Dorie


  7. This article considers tests that include a mix of dichotomous and polytomous items and gives a proof of the asymptotic normality of the maximum likelihood estimate (MLE) of the ability parameter for such tests under a set of regularity conditions.
    Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, October 2015
    Sandip Sinharay


  8. The author discusses how researchers successfully tested new approaches for assessing person-fit for mixed format tests.
    Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, August 2015
    Sandip Sinharay


  9. In this article, researchers demonstrate how the ratio-of-mediator-probability weighting method can be used to decompose total effects into natural direct and indirect effects in the presence of treatment-by-mediator interactions.
    Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, June 2015
    Guanglei Hong, Jonah Deutsch, Heather D. Hill


  10. In this article, a latent trait model that is based on the linear transformation model and subsumes popular models from survival analysis is proposed for the response times in psychological tests.
    Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, June 2015
    Jochen Ranger, Jörg-Tobias Kuhn

Review of Educational Research


  1. A federally funded meta-analysis of 25 years’ worth of research found no conclusive evidence that developing students’ executive function skills leads to better academic performance.
    Review of Educational Research, December 2015
    Robin Jacob, Julia Parkinson


  2. The authors estimate that the overall effect of college on critical thinking skills is comparable to moving a student who starts at the 50th percentile to the 72nd percentile by the end of 4 years.
    Review of Educational Research, September 2015
    Christopher R. Huber, Nathan R. Kuncel


  3. A meta-analysis on the effects of technology-enhanced stories for children’s literacy development found that animated pictures, music, and sound effects improved story comprehension and vocabulary, while interactive elements were distracting.
    Review of Educational Research, December 2015
    Zsofia K. Takacs, Elise K. Swart, Adriana G. Bus


  4. In this meta-analysis, the authors investigated the effects of methods for providing item-based feedback in a computer-based environment on students’ learning outcomes.
    Review of Educational Research, December 2015
    Fabienne M. Van der Kleij, Remco C. W. Feskens, Theo J.H.M. Eggen


  5. A meta-analysis of the last decade of research on the trans-contextual model.
    Review of Educational Research, May 2015
    Martin S. Hagger, Nikos L.D. Chatzisarantis


  6. In this review, the authors investigated design features that promote engagement and learning in game-based learning (GBL) settings to address the lack of empirical evidence on the impact of game design on learning outcomes. They identify how the design of game-based activities may affect learning, and develop a set of recommendations for GBL instructional design.
    Review of Educational Research, December 2015
    Azita Iliya Abdul Jabbar, Patrick Felicia


  7. This meta-analysis found that digital games significantly enhanced student learning relative to nongame conditions and that augmented game designs were associated with significant learning benefits for K–16 students.
    Review of Educational Research, April 2015
    Douglas B. Clark, Emily E. Tanner-Smith, Stephen S. Killingsworth


  8. In this synthesis of research, the authors sought examples of research connecting culturally relevant education to positive student outcomes across content areas to create a reference useful to educational researchers, parents, teachers, and education leaders.
    Review of Educational Research, April 2015
    Brittany Aronson, Judson Laughter


  9. Researchers posit that the inclusion of minority experiences must shape the recruitment, retention, and assessment of minority representation at the university administrative level to achieve true diversity leadership at that level at predominantly White institutions.
    Review of Educational Research, December 2015
    Brandon L. Wolfe, Paulette Patterson Dilworth


  10. Using first-year grades and 1-year retention rates to review the effectiveness of first-year seminars, researchers found that first-year seminars have a small effect on both first-year grades and the 1-year retention rate.
    Review of Educational Research, May 2015
    Vahe Permzadian, Marcus Credé

Review of Research in Education


  1. Authors examine the history of testing teacher knowledge and philosophical and scientific developments in the assessment of teacher knowledge.
    Review of Research in Education, March 2015
    Drew H. Gitomer, Robert C. Zisk


  2. This chapter concerns the evolution of educational assessment from a paper-based technology to an electronic one, describes the stages of development, and uses it to place the new generation of assessments.
    Review of Research in Education, March 2015
    Randy Elliot Bennett


  3. The authors provide a detailed review of current language assessment policies and practices with ELL students under the federal requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act and discuss relevant research in order to evaluate their technical quality and validity. The authors examine the intersection of language assessment and academic content assessment in terms of their purposeful interpretation and use by educators in decision making.
    Review of Research in Education, March 2015
    Alison L. Bailey, Patricia E. Carroll


  4. The authors expand on past reviews of literature delineating the challenges in assessing English learners in their nondominant language, primarily reviewing the issues relevant to teaching English learners in the United States.
    Review of Research in Education, March 2015
    Kip Téllez, Eduardo Mosqueda


  5. The authors focus on the description and assessment of teachers’ social psychological factors, using scientific literature as a base, with the ultimate goal of producing assessments capable of populating classrooms with teachers who can model and incite behaviors that assist students in their learning.
    Review of Research in Education, March 2015
    Ayesha Madni, Eva L. Baker, Kirby A. Chow, Girlie C. Delacruz, Noelle C. Griffin


  6. In this article, researchers define English learners and evaluate the challenges inherent in assessing their academic knowledge, skills, and abilities through standardized tests and discuss actions that can be taken to promote valid interpretations for ELs and accommodations that should be made.
    Review of Research in Education, March 2015
    Stephen G. Sireci, Molly Faulkner-Bond


  7. This article reviews what has happened as accessibility and accommodations research and practice for content assessments are advanced to ensure the appropriate inclusion and validity of assessment results for English learners and students with disabilities.
    Review of Research in Education, March 2015
    Martha L. Thurlow, Rebecca J. Kopriva


  8. The researchers examine literature that explores the merits and shortcomings of English language proficiency testing as they have evolved over time, examine the evolving construct and operationalization of academic language, explore expanded conceptualizations of assessment, and offer a set of questions as a heuristic for test developers and educational professionals to continue to think critically about the role of English language proficiency assessments.
    Review of Research in Education, March 2015
    Timothy Boals, Dorry M. Kenyon, Alissa Blair, M. Elizabeth Cranley, Carsten Wilmes, Laura J. Wright


  9. The authors address the psychometric challenges in assessing English language learners and students with disabilities by addressing some general considerations in their assessment and discussing the efficacy of test accommodations and modifications.
    Review of Research in Education, March 2015
    Suzanne Lane, Brian Leventhal


  10. Authors introduce the theory that undergirds the role of testing adaptations in assessment to document the substantial research that has been completed on testing adaptations and to push the field to reexamine the methods used to answer questions about the appropriateness of evidence that has typically been collected.
    Review of Research in Education, March 2015
    Ryan J. Kettler

About AERA
The is the largest national interdisciplinary research association devoted to the scientific study of education and learning. Founded in 1916, ÐÜèÊÓÆµadvances knowledge about education, encourages scholarly inquiry related to education, and promotes the use of research to improve education and serve the public good. Find ÐÜèÊÓÆµon and .

###