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All Outputs (65)

Brokering knowledge from laboratory experiments in evidence‐based education: The case of interleaving (2024)
Journal Article
Rowlandson, P., & Simpson, A. (2024). Brokering knowledge from laboratory experiments in evidence‐based education: The case of interleaving. British Educational Research Journal, https://doi.org/10.1002/berj.4037

The turn to ‘evidence‐based education’ in the past three decades favours one type of evidence: experiment. Knowledge brokers ground recommendations for classroom practice on reports of experimental research. This paper distinguishes field and laborat... Read More about Brokering knowledge from laboratory experiments in evidence‐based education: The case of interleaving.

A recipe for disappointment: policy, effect size and the winner’s curse (2022)
Journal Article
Simpson, A. (2023). A recipe for disappointment: policy, effect size and the winner’s curse. Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness, 16(4), 643-662. https://doi.org/10.1080/19345747.2022.2066588

Evidence-based education aims to support policy makers choosing between potential interventions. This rarely involves considering each in isolation; instead, sets of evidence regarding many potential policy interventions are considered. Filtering a s... Read More about A recipe for disappointment: policy, effect size and the winner’s curse.

Making sense of ‘mastery’: Understandings of a policy term among a sample of teachers in England (2022)
Journal Article
Simpson, A., & Wang, Y. (2023). Making sense of ‘mastery’: Understandings of a policy term among a sample of teachers in England. International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education, 21(2), 581-600. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10763-021-10178-x

This paper considers the term ‘mastery’ as used in mathematics education across different times and locations. A case study from England is offered to show how these pedagogical approaches morph as they move from one territory to another, in the cont... Read More about Making sense of ‘mastery’: Understandings of a policy term among a sample of teachers in England.

How we assess mathematics degrees: the summative assessment diet a decade on (2021)
Journal Article
Iannone, P., & Simpson, A. (2022). How we assess mathematics degrees: the summative assessment diet a decade on. Teaching Mathematics and its Applications: An International Journal of the IMA, 41(1), 22-31. https://doi.org/10.1093/teamat/hrab007

Two previous studies mapping university mathematics students’ summative assessment diet in the UK revealed a clear picture. In general there was a dominance of closed book examinations with a strong relationship to departmental league table position.... Read More about How we assess mathematics degrees: the summative assessment diet a decade on.

Benchmarking a misnomer: A note on “Interpreting effect sizes in education interventions” (2021)
Journal Article
Simpson, A. (2023). Benchmarking a misnomer: A note on “Interpreting effect sizes in education interventions”. Educational Researcher, 52(3), 180-182. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189x20985448

A recent article calculates new benchmarks from the distribution of effect sizes in a dataset, without accounting for signed values or sampling appropriately. In addition, the focus-narrowing approach it takes does little to address the issues highli... Read More about Benchmarking a misnomer: A note on “Interpreting effect sizes in education interventions”.

Mathematics and Statistics (2019)
Book Chapter
Iannone, P., & Simpson, A. (2019). Mathematics and Statistics. In S. Marshall (Ed.), A Handbook for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education: Enhancing Academic Practice. Routledge

Developing Pre-service Teachers’ Professional Vision with Video Interventions: A Divergent Replication (2019)
Journal Article
Simpson, A., & Vondrová, N. (2019). Developing Pre-service Teachers’ Professional Vision with Video Interventions: A Divergent Replication. Journal of Education for Teaching, 45(5), 567-584. https://doi.org/10.1080/02607476.2019.1674563

Much research on teachers’ professional vision examines development through video interventions. Evidence suggests they change focus towards specifics, subject matter and students and away from the evaluation. This study was designed to examine wheth... Read More about Developing Pre-service Teachers’ Professional Vision with Video Interventions: A Divergent Replication.

Whose Prior is it Anyway? A Note on 'Rigorous Large-Scale Educational RCTs are Often Uninformative' (2019)
Journal Article
Simpson, A. (2019). Whose Prior is it Anyway? A Note on 'Rigorous Large-Scale Educational RCTs are Often Uninformative'. Educational Researcher, 48(6), 382-384. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189x19855076

A recent paper uses Bayes factors to argue a large minority of rigorous, large-scale education RCTs are ‘uninformative’. The definition of ‘uninformative’ depends on the authors’ hypothesis choices for calculating Bayes factors. These arguably over-a... Read More about Whose Prior is it Anyway? A Note on 'Rigorous Large-Scale Educational RCTs are Often Uninformative'.

Separating arguments from conclusions: The mistaken role of effect size in educational policy research (2019)
Journal Article
Simpson, A. (2019). Separating arguments from conclusions: The mistaken role of effect size in educational policy research. Educational Research and Evaluation, 25(1-2), 99-109. https://doi.org/10.1080/13803611.2019.1617170

Effect size is the basis of much evidence-based education policymaking. In particular, it is assumed to measure the educational effectiveness of interventions. Policy is being driven by the influential work of John Hattie, the Education Endowment Fou... Read More about Separating arguments from conclusions: The mistaken role of effect size in educational policy research.

The relation between mathematics students' discipline-based epistemological beliefs and their summative assessment preferences (2019)
Journal Article
Simpson, A. (2019). The relation between mathematics students' discipline-based epistemological beliefs and their summative assessment preferences. International Journal of Research in Undergraduate Mathematics Education, 5(2), 147-162. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40753-019-00086-5

Existing research posits a relationship between undergraduate mathematics students’ mathematics-related epistemological beliefs and their perceptions of summative assessment. This paper reports a study investigating whether there is indeed such a rel... Read More about The relation between mathematics students' discipline-based epistemological beliefs and their summative assessment preferences.

Unmasking the unasked: correcting the record about assessor masking as an explanation for effect size differences (2018)
Journal Article
Simpson, A. (2018). Unmasking the unasked: correcting the record about assessor masking as an explanation for effect size differences. Educational Research and Evaluation, 24(1-2), 3-12. https://doi.org/10.1080/13803611.2018.1520131

Ainsworth et al.’s paper “Sources of Bias in Outcome Assessment in Randomised Controlled Trials: A Case Study” examines alternative accounts for a large difference in effect size between 2 outcomes in the same intervention evaluation. It argues that... Read More about Unmasking the unasked: correcting the record about assessor masking as an explanation for effect size differences.

Princesses are bigger than Elephants: effect size as a category error in evidence based education (2018)
Journal Article
Simpson, A. (2018). Princesses are bigger than Elephants: effect size as a category error in evidence based education. British Educational Research Journal, 44(5), 897-913. https://doi.org/10.1002/berj.3474

Much of the evidential basis for recent policy decisions is grounded in effect size: the standardised mean difference in outcome scores between a study's intervention and comparison groups. This is interpreted as measuring educational influence, impo... Read More about Princesses are bigger than Elephants: effect size as a category error in evidence based education.

Sources of Shifts in Pre-Service Teachers' Patterns of Attention: The Roles of Teaching Experience and of Observational Experience (2017)
Journal Article
Simpson, A., Vondrová, N., & Žalská, J. (2018). Sources of Shifts in Pre-Service Teachers' Patterns of Attention: The Roles of Teaching Experience and of Observational Experience. Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education, 21(6), 607-630. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10857-017-9370-6

A key requirement of successful initial teacher education is the development of professional vision, which includes shifting attention to features of the situation relevant to the specialized goals of teaching. Existing research hints at the value of... Read More about Sources of Shifts in Pre-Service Teachers' Patterns of Attention: The Roles of Teaching Experience and of Observational Experience.

The misdirection of public policy: comparing and combining standardised effect sizes (2017)
Journal Article
Simpson, A. (2017). The misdirection of public policy: comparing and combining standardised effect sizes. Journal of Education Policy, 32(4), 450-466. https://doi.org/10.1080/02680939.2017.1280183

Increased attention on ‘what works’ in education has led to an emphasis on developing policy from evidence based on comparing and combining a particular statistical summary of intervention studies: the standardised effect size. It is assumed that thi... Read More about The misdirection of public policy: comparing and combining standardised effect sizes.

The Structure of Surveys and the Peril of Panels (2016)
Journal Article
Simpson, A. (2018). The Structure of Surveys and the Peril of Panels. Studies in Higher Education, 43(8), 1334-1347. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2016.1252321

University league tables give the image that there is a single dimension along which institutions can be placed. Most derive rankings from an aggregate score of multiple items, which often include opinion responses which has the potential to introduc... Read More about The Structure of Surveys and the Peril of Panels.

Three concepts or one? Students' understanding of basic limit concepts (2016)
Journal Article
Fernández-Plaza, J., & Simpson, A. (2016). Three concepts or one? Students' understanding of basic limit concepts. Educational Studies in Mathematics, 93(3), 315-332. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10649-016-9707-6

In many mathematics curricula, the notion of limit is introduced three times: the limit of a sequence, the limit of a function at a point and the limit of a function at infinity. Despite the use of very similar symbols, few connections between these... Read More about Three concepts or one? Students' understanding of basic limit concepts.