The 10 most-cited articles in Review of Educational Research, 2021

Students' self-determined motivation (acting out of interest, curiosity, and abiding values) is associated with higher academic well-being, persistence, and achievement. Self-determination theory posits that self-determined motivation is dependent on the satisfaction of three psychological needs (relatedness, competence, and autonomy), which are in turn facilitated through need-supportive behaviors from notable others. In this meta-analysis, conducted over 144 studies and more than 79,000 students, we sought to overview pathways to student motivation in order to verify (1) how do psychological needs rank in the strength of their prediction of self-determined motivation and (2) which autonomy-support providers (parents or teachers) are the most relevant for psychological need satisfaction in students and self-determined motivation. Results show that teacher autonomy support predicts students' need satisfaction and self-determined motivation more strongly than parental autonomy support. In addition, competence is the most positive predictor of self-determined motivation, followed by…

Universities around the world are incorporating online learning, often relying upon videos (asynchronous multimedia). We systematically reviewed the effects of video on learning in higher education. We searched five databases using 27 keywords to find randomised trials that measured the learning effects of video among college students. We conducted full-text screening, data-extraction, and risk of bias in duplicate. We calculated pooled effect-sizes using multi-level random-effects meta-analysis. Searches retrieved 9,677 unique records. After screening 329 full-texts, 105 met inclusion criteria, with a pooled sample of 7,776 students. Swapping video for existing teaching methods led to small improvements in student learning (g = 0.28). Adding video to existing teaching led to strong learning benefits (g = 0.80). Although results may be subject to some experimental and publication biases, they suggest that videos are unlikely to be detrimental and usually improve student learning.

Drawing on the global interdisciplinary literature on decolonizing curriculum and pedagogy (DCP) in higher education, we critically examined the idea of decolonizing in the context of disciplines and universities around the world. Based on a critical analysis of 207 articles and book chapters published in English and centering a geopolitics of knowledge frame, we present three themes: (a) decolonizing meaning(s), (b) actualizing decolonization, and (c) challenges to actualizing, all related to DCP. We observed three major meanings of decolonization and four ways to actualize DCP that were associated with geographical, disciplinary, institutional, and/or stakeholder contexts. We argue that while there are similarities within the literature, ultimately the meanings, actualizations, and challenges of DCP are contextual, which has political and epistemological consequences. We end by offering directions for education research on DCP, revealing the possibility for a field or discipline of decolonial studies.

This meta-analysis examines the inconsistent findings across experimental studies that compared children’s learning outcomes with digital and paper books. We quantitatively reviewed 39 studies reported in 30 articles (n = 1,812 children) and compared children’s story comprehension and vocabulary learning in relation to medium (reading on paper versus on-screen), design enhancements in digital books, the presence of a dictionary, and adult support for children aged between 1 and 8 years. The comparison of digital versus paper books that only differed by digitization showed lower comprehension scores for digital books. Adults’ mediation during print books’ reading was more effective than the enhancements in digital books read by children independently. However, with story-congruent enhancements, digital books outperformed paper books. An embedded dictionary had no or negative effect on children’s story comprehension but positively affected children’s vocabulary learning. Findings are discussed in relation to the cognitive load theory and practical design implications.

When learning a new concept, should students engage in problem solving followed by instruction (PS-I) or instruction followed by problem solving (I-PS)? Noting that there is a passionate debate about the design of initial learning, we report evidence from a meta-analysis of 53 studies with 166 comparisons that compared PS-I with I-PS design. Our results showed a significant, moderate effect in favor of PS-I (Hedge’s g 0.36 [95% confidence interval 0.20; 0.51]). The effects were even stronger (Hedge’s g ranging between 0.37 and 0.58) when PS-I was implemented with high fidelity to the principles of Productive Failure (PF), a subset variant of PS-I design. Students’ grade level, intervention time span, and its (quasi-)experimental nature contributed to the efficacy of PS-I over I-PS designs. Contrasting trends were, however, observed for younger age learners (second to fifth graders) and for the learning of domain-general skills, for which effect sizes favored I-PS. Overall, an estimation of true effect sizes after accounting for publication bias suggested a strong effect size…

Although flipped classroom pedagogies have been widely touted for their ability to foster diverse 21st-century learning objectives, previous syntheses of flipped learning have focused almost exclusively on outcomes related to academic achievement. Using data from 317 studies, our research addresses this deficit by providing a comprehensive meta-analysis of the effects of flipped versus lecture-based learning on academic, intra-/interpersonal, and satisfaction-related outcomes in higher education. Overall, flipped classroom interventions produced positive gains across all three learning domains, and we found significant advantages of flipped over lecture-based instruction for seven out of eight outcomes (gs = 0.20–0.53). At the same time, there was substantial heterogeneity in flipped learning effects, and we identified several variables that influenced the relative efficacy of flipped versus traditional courses. Of the three types of moderators examined (contextual, design-based, and methodological), educational context (e.g., discipline, location) accounted for the most variability…

The relationships that students have with teachers and peers are important for their academic, social, and behavioral development. How teachers relate to students may affect students’ peer relationships and thereby foster or hamper students’ development. To shed more light on the teacher’s role with respect to peer relationships, this meta-analysis assessed the association between the quality of teacher–student and peer relationships (n = 297 studies; n = 1,475 unique effect sizes). We took student behavior into account, as it is known to affect both types of relationship. In addition, design characteristics such as positive versus negative aspects of relationships, type of informants, and educational level were considered. Results showed that negative aspects of the teacher–student relationship in particular were predictive of peer relationships. Moreover, teacher–student relationship quality partially mediated the association between student behavior and peer relationships. For teachers, preventing or reducing negative aspects in their relationships with students who have…

Multimedia is ubiquitous in 21st-century education. Cognitive Load Theory and the Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning both postulate that the quality of multimedia design heavily influences learning. We sought to identify how to best design multimedia, and review how well those learning theories held up to meta-analyses. We conducted an overview of systematic reviews that tested the effects of multimedia design on learning or cognitive load. We found 29 reviews including 1,189 studies and 78,177 participants. We found 11 design principles that demonstrated significant, positive, meta-analytic effects on learning, and five that significantly improved management of cognitive load. The largest benefits were for captioning second-language videos, temporal/spatial contiguity, and signaling. We also found robust evidence for modality, animation, coherence/removing seductive details, anthropomorphics, segmentation, personalisation, pedagogical agents, and verbal redundancy effects. Good design was more important for more complex materials, and in system-paced environments (e.g.,…

This article presents the findings of a systematic qualitative analysis of research in the ethics of digital trace data use in learning and education. From the resulting analysis of 77 peer-reviewed studies, we (1) map the characteristics of research by study type, academic community, institutional setting, and national context; (2) identify the primary ethical concerns and related responses; and (3) highlight the research gaps. Four areas of focus are identified in this emerging area: (1) privacy, informed consent, and data ownership; (2) validity and integrity; (3) ethical decision making; and (4) governance and accountability. We highlight the lack of evidence particularly for preschool and school-aged children and the disparate communities working in this domain, and we suggest a more cohesive approach, where the wider learning and educational ecosystem is recognized, explicit engagement with ethical theory is central, and mid- to long-term ethical issues are considered alongside immediate concerns.

This article presents a meta-analysis on cognitive (e.g., academic performance) and psychosocial outcomes (e.g., self-concept, well-being) among students with general learning difficulties and their peers without learning difficulties in inclusive versus segregated educational settings. In total, we meta-analyzed k = 40 studies with 428 effect sizes and a total sample of N = 11,987 students. We found a significant small to medium positive effect for cognitive outcomes of students with general learning difficulties in inclusive versus segregated settings ( d = 0.35) and no effect on psychosocial outcomes ( d = 0.00). Students without general learning difficulties did not differ cognitively ( d = −0.14) or psychosocially ( d = 0.06) from their counterparts in segregated settings. We examined several moderators (e.g., design, diagnosis, type of outcome). We discuss possible selection effects as well as implications for future research and practice.