The Effects of Data-based Instruction (DBI) for Students with Learning Difficulties in Korea: A Single-subject Meta-analysis

Abstract

Data-based instruction (DBI) is an ongoing process to utilize students’ data for determining when and how to intensify intervention. It is an educational approach that is suggested as effective to enhance achievements of struggling learners, particularly for those who did not respond to intensive intervention in usual ways. In Korea, DBI was introduced and applied for students with learning difficulties especially since 2000 when the first Korea curriculum-based measurement (CBM) was developed as the name of Basic Academic Skills Assessment. Despite a number of studies accumulated since then, there has been a lack of research that examined the level of evidence-based practice (EBP) of DBI research. Thus, the present study sought to synthesize the DBI research so far in Korea by analyzing the effectiveness of DBI for school-aged students with learning difficulties via meta-analysis and evaluating the quality of the research. In this study, a total of 32 single-subject design studies were used. Multilevel meta-analysis revealed that the mean effect size of DBI was statistically significant (B = 1.34) and there was significant variance across participants in effect sizes. The results from the conditional model showed that exceptionality type, the number of sessions, and the length of each session were significantly accountable for the variability of effect sizes. In addition, the results of the qualitative analysis revealed the acceptable quality of the overall DBI research with some limitations. Based on these findings, implications and study limitations were discussed.

A Systematic Review of CBM Content in Practitioner-Focused Journals: Do We Talk About Instructional Decision-Making?

“…After an adjustment is implemented, the process is repeated to continue monitoring student progress. Metaanalyses of DBI effectiveness support its use for improving academic performance across content areas (Jung et al, 2018;Kim & Choi, 2021).…”

The quality and effectiveness of Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) intervention studies in Korea: A meta-analysis

“…We selected intervention studies on SEL programs delivered to children and adolescents before adulthood and measuring their effectiveness quantitatively by following procedures (Fig 1). First, relevant studies were identified through three Korean major research data repositories, which are the most frequently used database to conduct systematic review on Korean articles [8]: RISS (Research Information Sharing Service; https://www.riss.kr), KISS (Korean studies Information Service System; https://kiss.kstudy.com), and Nurimedia DBpia (https:// www.nurimedia.co.kr). We set social-emotional as a term necessary to be included in the title, abstract, and keywords from each study, with combination of following nouns such as learning, education, and competence.…”

“…However, individual SEL programs do not always show the same astonishing improvement in students' socioemotional competencies unless implemented effectively, with high-quality, evidence-based instructions [5,6]. In educational practice, since teachers are required to use instructions scientifically proven effective, it is necessary for researchers to constantly identify and implement evidence-based practice (EBP) [7,8]. In order to investigate EBP of a certain kind of educational program, it is first necessary to identify the considerable effectiveness of that program across various participants, formats, and educational settings [9].…”

“…First, former literature reviews on SEL programs did not fully examine scientific quality of each implementation. In order to investigate whether the specific intervention have some scientific evidence, it is imperative to evaluate the quality of the individual studies in terms of study design and method as well as identifying their effectiveness [8,14]. Although prior meta-analyses [5,[10][11][12][13] considered methodology and study design as possible moderators for the effect sizes, they did not examine exactly what needs to be complemented in order to improve overall quality of intervention studies and suggest scientific evidence for SEL implementers.…”