There were significant differences between persuasion and comparison classrooms on all variables.
Results indicate that students in classrooms where teachers received the professional development (n = 31) had significantly higher growth in expressive language scores (p = .012) than students in comparison classrooms (n = 34).
Treatment classrooms scored significantly higher than the comparison classrooms on all three of these measures.
The types of activities observed in the BrainU and comparison classrooms are described below (Pedagogical Implementation).
The range of activities observed in treatment teachers' classrooms was more laboratory-based and more varied than in comparison classrooms.
Observations occurred during the academic year following BrainU participation or for comparison classrooms, at the end of the study period.
When all observations of BrainU classrooms from all years are pooled, at 20 min, students in BrainU classrooms are significantly more engaged than in comparison classrooms.
Comparison classrooms worked on problem solving (16.7%), learning computer software (16.7%), doing comparisons (16.7%), brainstorming or classifying (16.7%), or playing games (16.7%), activities not observed at all in BrainU classrooms.
BrainU classrooms were engaged in developing (9%) or testing (4%) hypotheses, designing experiments (9%), or collecting (42%) and analyzing and interpreting (7%) data in contrast to comparison classrooms, which only collected data (16.7%).
Every effort is made to match intervention and comparison classrooms on demographic characteristics in order to minimize differences not due to the intervention (e.g., % minority race/ethnicity, teacher education).
