By Qiyang Zhang, Johns Hopkins University
Flashcards and quizzes are widely used pedagogical practices among educators. Typically, such interventions only involve teacher pre-treatment training but not on-going coaching. A recent publication in Journal of Educational Effectiveness explored a popular flashcard intervention called SAFMEDS (Say-All-Fast-Minute-Every-Day-Shuffled). This research aims to examine the effectiveness of implementation support for SAFMEDS.
Researchers conducted this half-year experiment in North Wales’ primary schools in the United Kingdom. They adopted a school-level cluster randomization-controlled trial, where treatment schools (n = 33) received on-going support from researchers and control schools (n = 31) only received necessary technical assistance. The on-going support was composed of three one-hour school visits and email communications between researchers and teachers. Researchers observed the process and gave individualized feedback to each teacher. The outcome of interest was children’s arithmetical fluency measured by Mathematics Fluency and Calculation Tests (MFaCTs).
The results provide evidence for small but positive effects of implementation support. Specifically, the effect size was +0.23 for students in grades 1-2 and +0.25 for students in grades 3-5. In-situ coaching has multiple assumed benefits, including enhanced student engagement and outcomes, better implementation fidelity, and opportunities for regular check-ins and adaptations based on suggestions. As the research has suggested, infrequent but accessible on-going support may be the secret sauce to improve intervention effectiveness.
Best Evidence in Brief Index 