Digital vs. paper reading

A study published in the American Educational Research Journal compares reading processes and outcomes for students when reading a text from paper with the same text delivered on a touchscreen laptop.

Amanda P. Goodwin and colleagues conducted the study with 371 students in grades 5–8 from three schools in an urban district in the southeastern U.S. Students were randomly assigned to two conditions: Condition A read the first section of a text on paper, and the second half digitally, whereas students in Condition B read the first part digitally and the second part on paper. The content in both conditions was identical. When reading on paper, students had access to highlighters, pens, and sticky notes; when reading digitally, they had access to digital highlighters, annotating, and dictionaries.

Results suggest that students highlight and annotate more when reading on paper vs. digital text. Also, reading on paper vs. digitally was slightly supportive of reading comprehension for the longer sections of text, although effect sizes were very small.

Interleaved practice improves math test scores

The results of a randomized controlled trial, published in Journal of Educational Psychology, suggest that a greater emphasis on interleaved practice may dramatically improve math test scores for seventh graders. Whereas most mathematics worksheets consist of a block of problems devoted to the same skill or concept, an interleaved worksheet is arranged so that no two consecutive problems require the same strategy.

Doug Rohrer and colleagues conducted the study with 54 classes in a large school district in Florida during the 2017–2018 school year. Over a period of four months, the classes periodically completed either interleaved or blocked worksheets, and then both groups completed an interleaved review worksheet. All students completed the same problems. One month later, students took an unannounced test which was set by the researchers. Students who had completed the interleaved assignments performed much better on the unannounced test than those in the blocked assignment group (effect size = +0.83).

The researchers suggest that the large effect sizes observed in the study for interleaved math practice may be due to the learning strategies it involves, which force the student to choose an appropriate strategy for each problem on the basis of the problem itself. They also identified some limitations of the study – particularly that the interleaving students took longer to complete their worksheets so effectively spent more time on each topic.

Self-explanation is often more effective than presenting students with an explanation

Researchers at Simon Fraser University in Canada conducted a meta-analysis on research that investigated learning outcomes for students who received self-explanation prompts while studying or solving problems. Self-explanation is a process by which students use prior knowledge to make inferences in order to fill in missing information or monitor understanding.

Their study, published in Educational Psychological Review, examined 69 independent effect sizes from 64 studies (5,917 participants). Studies had to include a treatment condition in which learners were directed or prompted to self-explain during a learning task, with a comparison treatment where learners were directed not to self-explain. The measure was a cognitive outcome such as problem solving or comprehension. Learning activities were mostly of short duration (less than an hour) and carried out with undergraduate students.

The analysis found an overall weighted mean effect size of +0.55 on learning outcomes for students who were prompted to self-explain compared to those who were not. However, most of the studies were very brief and artificial, so the outcomes cannot be assumed to apply to actual classroom practice. Moderating variables were also examined in order to investigate how learning outcomes varied under a range of conditions, but were found to have no significant difference on effect sizes. The study concludes that having students come up with an explanation themselves is often more effective than presenting them with an explanation.

Two behaviors linked to dropout rates in high school

A study published in the Journal of School Health examines how two behaviors – aggression and poor study skills – may be a factor in why some students do not finish high school.

Pamela Orpinas and colleagues randomly selected 620 sixth-grade students from northeast Georgia schools. Teachers completed a behavior rating scale for these students every year from sixth to twelfth grade. Based on teacher ratings, the students were categorized into low, medium, and high aggression trajectories from middle to high school and into five study-skills groups (low, average-low, decreasing, increasing, and high). Examples of behaviors considered to be aggressive were threatening to hurt, hitting, bullying, and teasing others. Examples of study skills were doing extra credit work, being well-organized, completing homework, working hard, and reading assigned chapters. Participants in the study were classified as a dropout if they were not enrolled in school and had not obtained a high school diploma by the end of the spring term in twelfth grade.

Students who were identified in the high-aggression/low-study-skills group had a 50% dropout rate compared to students with low aggression and high study skills who had a dropout rate of less than 2%. The results highlight the importance of early interventions that combine academic enhancement and behavioral management for reducing school dropout rates.