Avoiding Bias in Randomised Controlled Trials in Educational Research

Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) are often seen as the 'gold standard' of evaluative research. However, whilst randomisation will ensure comparable groups, trials are still vulnerable to a range of biases that can undermine their internal validity. In this paper we describe a number of common threats to the internal validity of RCTs and methods of countering them. We highlight a number of examples from randomised trials in education and health care where problems of execution and analysis of the RCT has undermined their internal validity. However, awareness of these potential biases can lead to careful planning to avoid or reduce their occurrence. If good quality randomised trials are to inform policy and practice in education then rigorous trials need to be designed that are the least susceptible to threats to their validity.     

Masculinity Politics, Myths and Boys' Schooling: A Review Essay

This essay reviews two recently published American books about masculinity politics—Michael Kimmel's pro-feminist Manhood in America and his edited collection The Politics of Manhood —in order to comment critically on the current debate underway in various parts of the world on 'boys' and their schooling which sees them as the 'new victims' of the educational process.     

Conditioning with taste as the CS in conditioned flavor preference learning

There appear to be unconditioned affective reactions to the four basic tastes: liking for sweet and salt and disliking for sour and bitter. We attempted to modify these reactions by pairing the tastes with calories and with sweeter tastes. Differing sucrose concentrations were ineffective in reversing the preference for salt over citric acid or for saccharin over quinine. We could, however, reverse the preference for salt over citric acid, producing an actual preference for sour over salt, by using sucrose and saccharin as the reinforcers. The initial reactions to tastes could also be modified by reducing the initial difference in affect produced by the tastes through mixing both tastes with sucrose.     

Sharing teacher knowledge at scale: teacher inquiry,learning design and the representation of teachers’ practice

Sharing teachers’ professional knowledge remains challenging. Teachers’ development often remains ad hoc or local, and attempts to scale this up have proved problematic. To address this, research in areas such as ‘learning design’ has explored the use of formal representations of practice. This proposes that educational practice can be improved by documenting, sharing and building on what teachers already do. Whilst this has led to some successes, it has not resulted in the widespread transformation of practice. This paper reviews the literature about sharing teacher knowledge. The challenges of scaling up development are then considered in relation to two theories that help explain the challenges: Communities of Practice and Sociomateriality. This analysis is illustrated through case studies in Norway and the UK. These show that teachers already create and share artefacts that represent their pedagogic knowledge. However, they found formal representations, such as learning designs, difficult to work with. The paper concludes that scaling up teacher development using abstract formalisms is unlikely to succeed. Instead, teachers value stories and the materials they already create in their day-to-day practice. It is this intermediate level of representation, between direct experience and formal abstraction, that offers the most promise for sharing practice.     

Extinction and food-reinforced inhibition of conditioned salivation in dogs

The present experiment compared two methods of eliminating a classically conditioned response in dogs, extinction and reinforcement of nonsalivation, using both a within- and between-subjects experimental design. Eighteen dogs were trained for 16 days in Phase I, 16 days in Phase II, and 8 days in Phase III. In Phase I, each subject received classical conditioning training to two stimuli. In Phase II, Group 1 received extinction training to one stimulus and reinforcement of nonsalivation to the other stimulus. Group 2 received continued classical conditioning training to one stimulus and reinforcement on nonsalivation training to the other. Group 3 received continued classical conditioning training to one stimulus and extinction training to the other. In both the within- and between-subjects comparisons, responding to the stimulus associated with extinction was eliminated faster than responding to the stimulus associated with reinforcement of nonsalivation.     

Disentangling the relationship between working memory and language: The roles of short-term storage and cognitive control

This study investigates the relationship between working memory and language in young children growing up in a multilingual environment. The aim is to explore whether mechanisms of short-term storage and cognitive control hold similar relations to emerging language skills and to investigate if potential links are mediated by related cognitive abilities. A sample of 119 Luxembourgish 6-year-olds completed several assessments of working memory (complex and simple span), native and foreign vocabulary, syntax, reading, rhyme awareness, and fluid intelligence. Results showed that short-term storage and cognitive control manifested differential links with developing language abilities: Whereas verbal short-term storage was specifically linked to vocabulary; cognitive control manifested unique and robust links with syntax and early reading development. The study suggests that in young children the working memory system is composed of separate but interacting components corresponding to short-term storage and cognitive control that can be distinguished by the roles they play in supporting language acquisition.