Theories: D

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• dAFM: a neural-network fusion of psychometric and connectionist modeling enabling backpropagation-based Q-matrix refinement - dAFM augments the Additive Factors Model, whose "calculations and constraints we show can be exactly replicated within the framework of neural networks", by representing the Q-matrix as a weight coeff
• Dale's Cone of Experience as a framework classifying media experiences along concrete-abstract dimensions of learning - The Cone of Experience, introduced by Edgar Dale in 1946 in Audio-Visual Methods in Teaching, is a way to classify media experiences in relation to psychological dimensions of learning.
• Data storytelling: framing learning-platform data as rich narratives of individual learners' journeys to guide support and theory development - The paper organizes its argument around the metaphor of learning theories as stories positioning the learner as protagonist, with the platform supplying setting and plot.
• Data-use cycle: collect and prepare data, interpret and hypothesize, modify instruction - The guide frames using data to improve instruction as a cyclical process with three steps: "Collect and prepare a variety of data about student learning", "Interpret data and develop hypotheses about
• Declarative/procedural (D/P) model of L2 morphological learning - Ullman's declarative/procedural model holds that two memory systems support language: declarative memory, relying on medial temporal lobe circuitry, supports memorization of facts and item-based forms
• Decolonial and feminist framework positioning AI leadership as moral and onto-epistemological stewardship - The article synthesizes decolonial theory, which situates AI within histories of coloniality that normalize Eurocentric epistemologies, with critical feminist theory, which illuminates the invisible r
• Deep Learning Knowledge Tracing Models - The survey reviews deep learning KT in four sub-categories: deep knowledge tracing with recurrent networks, memory-aware tracing such as DKVMN with key and value matrices, attentive tracing such as SA
• Deep versus surface learning strategies as determinants of scientific text understanding - The article organises cognitive learning strategies by the depth of processing they induce.
• Deferred acceptance assignment with strategy-proof ranking - GoCPS assigns students via a deferred acceptance process: each student is temporarily placed in their top-ranked program, programs order eligible applicants by priority group and then lottery number o
• Deferred acceptance with a single best offer - GoCPS assigns students via a computerized deferred acceptance process, also used to match medical residents to hospitals, in which each applicant is considered for the highest-ranked eligible program
• Deficit paradigm: minority underachievement explained by deficits the child brings to school - The Deficit paradigm, as the review describes it via Pianta and Walsh, locates minority underachievement in the child, who "comes to school with a deficit, whether biological, genetic, or cultural".
• Definitional framework of five modalities in MMCA research - The review develops a definitional framework classifying modalities used in MMCA studies into five categories: auditory, visual, physiological, kinesthetic, and tactile.
• DEIB framework: diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging as interdependent foundations of collaborative learning - The primer organizes inclusive collaborative learning around four defined terms.
• Deliberate Practice for Second Language Learning Framework - The article proposes a framework guiding educators to design classroom-based deliberate practice (DP) and out-of-class purposeful practice (PP) protocols for language learning.
• Deliberate practice framework - The deliberate practice framework, drawn from Ericsson and Pool, holds that expertise is built through "meticulously structured and purposefully engaged practice" rather than innate talent or favorabl
• Deliberation as a micro-level lens for operationalizing socially shared regulation of learning - The article proposes deliberation — the "deliberative, negotiation characteristic of interactions for regulation in CL contexts" — as a new micro-level theoretical lens for SSRL.
• Demographic variable mutability as an organizing distinction for predictor selection - The article organizes the debate around what a demographic variable is and whether schools can change it.
• Demonstrated interest: applicant contacts with admissions offices as signals of enrollment probability - The article frames applicants' contacts with admissions offices, such as campus visits, as signals that admissions officers read as interest in enrolling.
• Dependence-based image-role taxonomy for visual math items - The article operationalizes a four-code taxonomy of image roles in math problems: REQUIRED, USEFUL, NOTREQUIRED, and INSUFFICIENT.
• Depth of word knowledge continuum (association, comprehension, generation) - The article describes word knowledge as existing on a continuum of depth, with levels described as minimal, partial, and full, and, following Stahl, as association, comprehension, and generation.
• Design Layers Theory - Design Layers Theory holds that an instructional design is not a single unified artifact but a stack of interacting layers — model/content, strategy, message, control, representation, media-logic, and
• Design Thinking four-phase process (Singapore Polytechnic toolkit) - The article adopts the Singapore Polytechnic Department of Educational Development (2011) account of Design Thinking as a four-phase cycle: "sense and sensibility, empathy, ideation, and prototype." S
• Design-based approach to causal inference - The brief presents the design-based approach to causal inference, describing "their key concepts and how they compare to model-based methods." It presents "rudiments of the design-based approach...
• Designerly Stances - A framework describing six dimensions along which a teacher's approach to a problem of practice can range from a "beginning designer" stance (fixed problem, routine issue, designer-centric) to an "inf
• Designerly talk as informal discourse embodying critical character and design judgment within a community of practice - Designerly talk is a construct describing informal communications among design students and practitioners that express design thinking externally.
• Desirable difficulties: spacing and retrieval practice for L2 vocabulary - The article organizes its rationale around desirable difficulties, defined as "activities or situations which increase the difficulty of a task initially," which slow learning and can lower short-term
• Developmental progressions as an organizing framework for early math instruction and assessment - Developmental progressions are "sequences of skills and concepts that children acquire as they build math knowledge." The guide uses them as a road map: Recommendations 1 and 2 outline how each early
• Developmental rationale: caring school communities meeting needs for autonomy, belonging, and competence - The program rests on a research-based account of students' academic, social, and ethical development.
• Developmental relationships: experiences shape development most within strong, supportive, sustained relationships with adults and peers - A second organizing concept holds that experiences influence development most when embedded in strong relationships.
• Developmental Research Designs — Cross-Sectional, Longitudinal, and Sequential - Studying change over time requires choosing among three research designs — cross-sectional, longitudinal, and sequential — each with a different tradeoff between cost, duration, and the specific confo
• Dewey's democratic education - The article grounds its egalitarian program-design argument in Dewey's democratic education, quoting Democracy and Education on "that type of education which gives individuals a personal interest in s
• Dewey's five-phase reflective cycle of thought - The paper describes Dewey's (1933) account of disciplined, problem-centered reflective thought: 'Dewey (1933) identifies five phases in the reflective cycle of thought.' Reflection begins with an unco
• Dewey's moral deliberation as dramatic rehearsal of competing possible lines of action - Dewey's moral deliberation, introduced in 1932, is the article's central explanatory framework for moral education: it is the process used in dealing with a moral problem, defined as "a dramatic rehea
• Dewey's pedagogical principles: school as life itself, no subject with educational value on its own, and education for all citizens - The article presents a set of Deweyan pedagogical principles against which it evaluates the Turkish education project.
• Dewey's theory of inquiry: reflection as the instrument that resolves problematic situations - Dewey's theory of inquiry, which the paper calls the centerpiece of his philosophy and often equated with scientific method, holds that much behavior is automatic, driven by habit and impulse.
• Dialectical monism: culture restructures natural mind, and applied research is basic research - Lantolf presents SCT as a dialectical, non-dualistic theory: humans begin with biologically evolved natural mentation, and culture, largely through language, does not create something new but "restruc
• Dialectical thinking and its support in preschool education (DTS scale) - Following Veraksa (2006), the article defines dialectical thinking as "a system of mental actions aimed at performing three types of tasks: understanding the process of development, solving contradict
• Dialectical thinking as the system for improving quality of thought - The article defines dialectical thinking as "a way of thinking characterized by a reciprocal interaction of information, precepts, and ideas struggling to be reconciled into clear patterns of thought"
• Dialogic teaching as distinct from ordinary classroom conversation - The forum reports Leung's (2014) distinction between the dialogic and conversational nature of classroom interaction and feedback, drawing on Alexander's (2008) term dialogic teaching.
• Dialogism, intertextuality, and hypertextuality: the language-centered genealogy leading to connectivism - The article describes a chain of language-centered theories within architectonic thought: Bakhtin's dialogism, in which "languages do not exclude each other, but rather intersect with each other in ma
• Dialogism: Bakhtin's dialogic reconceptualization of architectonics as a philosophy of interrelations mediated by language and texts - The article presents dialogism as Bakhtin's appropriation and reinterpretation of Kantian architectonics.
• Dialogism: the relation of one utterance to other utterances as the context informing all writing - Dialogism, sometimes translated as intertextuality, is Bakhtin's term for the relation of one utterance to other utterances.
• Dialogue Knowledge Tracing (dialogueKT) Framework - DialogueKT is the task the article proposes, which "analyzes student discourse within the knowledge tracing (KT) framework".
• Didactic Randi Challenge (DRC) framework with five necessary characteristics - A DRC is a challenge that, according to the article, cannot be met under established laws of nature but would be easy to meet if certain pseudoscientific claims were correct, with enormous rewards for
• Didactic, interactive, and review: a three-approach taxonomy of elementary instruction - This report organizes elementary classroom instruction into three approaches distinguished by teacher and student behaviors.
• Differentiated knowledge measures framework: static/dynamic, modality, and quality categories - The article proposes that multimedia learning effects should be evaluated with knowledge measures differentiated along three categories.
• Digital learning: the integrated educational approach combining technology, connectivity, content and human resources - The report defines digital learning as "the educational approach that integrates technology, connectivity, content and human resources." It argues that addressing hardware, connectivity, content and p
• Digital Promise defines computational thinking as a set of computational skills and computational practices that teachers can map onto subject-matter learning - The report defines computational thinking for practitioners as practices and skills rather than technical jargon.
• Digital Promise's three principle sets for inclusive LER design - The toolkit catalogs three Digital Promise principle sets developed with front-line workers, educators, employers, and other stakeholders: Inclusive Design principles (2022) such as "Demonstrates evid
• Digital well-being as a healthy, intentional relationship with technology - The report defines digital well-being as "the ability to maintain a healthy, intentional relationship with technology." Rather than labeling technology as inherently good or bad, the concept emphasize
• DiPietro's Strategic-Interaction Method gives equal significance to form and function and analyzes conversation along formal, transactional, and interactional dimensions - The Strategic-Interaction (S-I) Method, designed by Robert J.
• DiPietro's Strategic-Interaction Method: equal weight to form and function across three dimensions of conversational discourse - The Strategic-Interaction (S-I) Method, designed by Robert J.
• Direct versus Mediated Effects of Retrieval Practice - A distinction the chapter uses to organize retrieval research.
• Directed acyclic graphs as a nonparametric framework for identifying causal effects in learning analytics - The article presents DAGs, pioneered by Pearl, as a way of visually encoding causal assumptions among variables of interest so researchers can reason about bias and identification.
• DiSalvo et al. taxonomy of four anthropomorphic design forms - The review presents the DiSalvo et al.
• Disciplinary identity as a developmental process across the academic life course - The article frames disciplinary identity, or "connection to a particular academic discipline", as something "constructed through a developmental process across a scholar's academic life course".
• Discovery learning defined by two identifying characteristics: induction and errorful learning - Glaser's conceptual framework decomposes the label "discovery learning" into two analyzable processes.
• Dispositional mastery framework: Ability, Inclination, and Sensitivity - The article reframes mastery of cross-cutting Portrait Skill Sets and Practices as dispositional, drawing on Project Zero's account that "Dispositions include three elements: Ability, Inclination, and
• Distinction between cooperative learning and collaborative learning as two approaches to students working in groups - The primer defines two distinct approaches to students working in groups.
• Distinction between universal and targeted school-based programs - The report draws a scope distinction among school-based programs that determines who receives the intervention.
• Distinguishing computing, computer science, computational thinking, and programming - The guide's primer distinguishes four related terms to demystify computational thinking for educators.
• Distributed cognition: cognition as a function of a system of people and tools - The paper describes distributed cognition as extending the unit of analysis beyond the individual to the context in which the individual operates, so that "cognition is seen as less a function of the
• Distributed leadership model for school principals - The playbook describes distributed leadership as an approach Chicago Public Schools encourages, in which "principals, assistant principals, teachers, and other school staff share responsibilities to s
• Double-dose algebra as a sorting-plus-supporting alternative to tracking and detracking - The double-dose strategy created homogeneous algebra classes for organizational reasons but ensured that low-track students received challenging coursework and high-quality instruction through extende
• Dual anticipation of start and stop as an intermediate stage in constructing the multiplicative Double Counting scheme - The article postulates that constructing the first multiplicative scheme, multiplicative Double Counting (mDC), requires a dual anticipation: anticipating where to shift each count of a composite unit
• Dual Coding Theory - Dual Coding Theory proposes that verbal and nonverbal information can be processed in partly distinct but connected representational systems.
• Dual coding theory (Paivio) as an account of visual facilitation of L2 lexical knowledge - Dual coding theory holds that cognition comprises verbal and nonverbal (imagery) systems that are "functionally independent yet interconnected"; when both systems process information, the combination
• Dual coding theory as the explanatory account of video-supported L2 text comprehension - The article uses Paivio's dual coding theory (DCT) to explain why video plus narration plus text fosters comprehension.
• Dual coding theory: parallel verbal and nonverbal representation systems as an alternative to schema theory - The essay presents dual coding (Sadoski, Paivio, & Goetz, 1991) as an alternative to schema theory in which verbal stimuli are organized in terms of logogens representing phonemes, graphemes, morpheme
• Dual enrollment as a credit-based transition-to-college mechanism operating through college exposure, early credit accumulation, and cost reduction - The report describes dual enrollment programs as collaborations between secondary and postsecondary institutions that "allow high school students to take college courses and earn college credits while
• Dual nature of CRA learning: interdependent cognitive skills and dispositions - The guide holds that learning in CRA involves both cognitive skills (understanding and applying knowledge, such as statistical procedures for identifying item bias) and dispositions (humility, empathy
• Dual-focus approach to pronunciation instruction combining simultaneous attention to form and communicative intent - The dual-focus approach holds that effective pronunciation teaching must combine a simultaneous focus on form (accuracy) and meaning (communicative context) to promote transfer to spontaneous speech.
• Dual-process account of category access: general initial facilitation plus accumulating inhibition determined by the number of prior retrievals - The article proposes that two opposing processes operate during retrieval from semantic memory categories: a general initial facilitation (category "warm up") that speeds early retrievals, and a compo
• Dual-Process Account of Discovery in Writing - Writing generates new understanding through two largely independent processes — spontaneous, dispositionally-guided text production that synthesizes new ideas from implicit knowledge, and deliberate r
• Dual-responsibility framing of low-stakes testing programs - The article frames low-stakes testing programs as carrying a dual responsibility: test developers must both develop and administer a high-quality test that yields valid scores, and motivate examinees
• Dual-support mechanism: deep principal leadership catalyzes collective instructional work while teacher influence makes it meaningful - The report proposes an explanatory account of how the three key conditions work together in small schools.
• Dynamic assessment and the zone of proximal development as a framework for mediator-learner interaction - The forum presents Poehner's (2014) account of dynamic assessment (DA) within Vygotsky's sociocultural theory.
• Dynamic Language Learning Framework (DL2F): a communication-centric, learner-centered instructional model for language education - DL2F is a progressive pedagogical approach for language education that positions effective communication as the primary goal of learning.
• Dörnyei's L2 Motivational Self System as a three-component framework for L2 learning motivation - The article presents Dörnyei's (2005) L2 Motivational Self System as a comprehensive framework for L2 learning motivation, derived from Higgins' Self-Discrepancy Theory.