Getting a handle on the effectiveness of widely used instructional strategies is a challenge. They’re used in different fields and with broadly divergent design details. Moreover, studying the effects of strategy as it’s being used in a classroom presents research challenges and an array of possible methodological approaches. Bottom line: the quality of the work varies, and so do the results. This is why, as I’ve written before, that although it’s popular to refer to a strategy as an “evidence-based strategy,” most of the time the “evidence” contains lots of caveats.
