If you raise your hand in class, will the teacher notice right away? Do you spend most of your class time learning or is too much other stuff going on all around? Does your teacher know your strengths and how they differ from the kid’s next to you? Your answers to these questions depend partly on the number of students in your class.
Researchers argued for decades about whether class size matters for learning. Then an experiment in Tennessee in the 1980s plainly showed that students had learned more in classes with fewer students. Bingo!
Inspired by the strong evidence, California rushed to adopt a statewide program to shrink classes. How’d it work out? It didn’t. So many things went wrong. Small classes in California were a big disappointment. But confronting the unexpected is one way science progresses.
A Super-STAR Study
Before 1985, plenty of class-size studies existed, but their design led people to draw different conclusions. Then a unique (some might say drool-worthy) opportunity to find a clear answer arose. It was a randomized controlled experiment known as Project STAR (for Student/ Teacher Achievement Ratio). A randomized controlled experiment assigns participants to either a “treatment” or a “control” group based on chance, like by a coin flip. The treatment group receives something (such as a medicine or program) that the control group doesn’t. Then researchers compare the two groups. This process is a big deal because it measures if a treatment really works. The STAR experiment asked if students in kindergarten through third grade would learn more in classes with fewer kids. Over four years, STAR randomly assigned 11,600 kids and 1,300 teachers in 80 Tennessee schools to a regular-sized class (the control group) or a small class (the treatment group). Small classes had many fewer students, about 15 compared to about 22 students in regular-sized classes.
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Who's Your Cousin?
The great apes are among the most popular animals in most zoos. Their actions, facial expressions, and family life remind us so much of ourselves. Have you ever wondered, though, how we might look to them?
Is it possible to die of boredom?
To figure out if we can die of boredom, we first have to understand what boredom is. For help, we called James Danckert, a psychologist who studies boredom at the University of Waterloo in Canada.
THE PROBLEM WITH PALM OIL
Palm oil is all around you. Itâs in sugary snacks like cookies and candy bars. Itâs in lipstick and shampoo and pet food.
SERGE WICH
Serge Wichâs favorite days at work are spent out in the forest, studying orangutans in Sumatra and Borneo or chimpanzees in Tanzania.
ELODIE FREYMANN
When youâre feeling sick, it probably doesnât occur to you to try eating tree bark.
Guardians of the Forest
EARLY, MAKESHIFT WILDLIFE DRONES HELPED TO DETECT AND PROTECT ORANGUTANS.
APE ANTICS
The Whirling World of primate play
Dr. Ape Will See You Now
HUMANS ARENâT THE ONLYÂ PRIMATES THAT USE MEDICATION.
THE LEFT OVERS
A lot has happened for modern humans to get to this point. We lost most of our hair, learned how to make tools, established civilizations, sent a person to the Moon, and invented artificial intelligence. Whew! With all of these changes, our bodies have changed, too. Itâs only taken us about six million years.
SO, WHAT IS A PRIMATE?
What do you have in common with the aye-aye, sifaka, siamang, and potto? If you said your collarbone, you re probably a primatologistâa person who studies primates. If youâre not, read on.