Sam Sims
Experimental education research: clarifying why, how and when to use random assignment
Topics: MethodsTags: Efficacy, School reformOver the last twenty years, education researchers have increasingly conducted randomised experiments with the goal of informing the decisions of educators and policymakers. Such experiments have generally employed broad, consequential, standardised outcome measures in the hope that this would… more →
Effective teacher professional development: new theory and a meta-analytic test
Sam Sims, Harry Fletcher-Wood, Alison O’Mara-Eves, Sarah Cottingham, Claire Stansfield, Josh Goodrich, Jo Van Herwegen, Jake Anders.Topics: Teacher and Leader DevelopmentTags: Professional developmentMultiple meta-analyses have now documented small positive effects of teacher professional development (PD) on pupil test scores. However, the field lacks any validated explanatory account of what differentiates more from less effective in-service training. As a result, researchers have little in… more →