Research Studies Of The Week

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I often write about research studies from various fields and how they can be applied to the classroom. I write individual posts about ones that I think are especially significant, and will continue to do so. However, so many studies are published that it’s hard to keep up. So I’ve started writing a “round-up” of some of them each week or every other week as a regular feature.

You can see all my “Best” lists related to education research here.

Here are some new useful studies (and related resources):

This paper examined the effects of identifying the lowest 5% of performing schools in Ohio per ESSA. They found *negative* effects on attendance, graduation, and test scores. Why? More staff attrition, unclear how to improve, and did not come with more resources. www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1…

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— Betsy Wolf (@betsyjwolf.bsky.social) September 4, 2025 at 5:33 AM

ZIP Code Is Destiny? Turns Out That’s Bunk is from The Wall Street Journal and is an interesting critique of a well-known Chetty study.

Culturally Responsive Approaches to Indonesian Language Instruction: Insights for Inclusive Education is actually a nice short overview of how to do culturally responsive teaching anywhere, and it was interesting to read about it in the Indonesian context. I’m adding it to The Best Resources About “Culturally Responsive Teaching” & “Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy” – Please Share More!

Development and validation of a scale to measure L2 motivation in Australian secondary students talks about motivation using Zoltan Dörnyei’s research, which is focused on language learners. You can learn more about his work here. I’m adding it to Best Posts On “Motivating” Students.

From Participation to Passion: Enhancing Motivation and Engagement in the Classroom is another new paper on student motivation. I’m adding it to the same list.