Agent Skills
› brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills
› jedpsych-topic-selection
jedpsych-topic-selection
GitHub用于评估教育心理学项目是否适合《Journal of Educational Psychology》期刊及选择稿件类型。通过教育相关性、心理理论、严谨性和生态效度四项标准进行压力测试，辅助决定研究框架与投稿策略。
Trigger Scenarios
在多个项目中为JEP选择选题或框架
收到关于工作缺乏理论性或教育意义的反馈
决定单篇研究、多研究包或元分析的格式
不确定测量/验证论文是否适合该期刊
Install
npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill jedpsych-topic-selection -g -y
SKILL.md
Frontmatter
{
"name": "jedpsych-topic-selection",
"description": "Use when deciding whether an educational-psychology project fits the Journal of Educational Psychology and which manuscript type to target. JEP wants original, primary psychological research on learning and instruction that matters for real educational settings; it does not typically publish single-instrument reliability\/validity studies. Frames the question; it does not collect data."
}
Topic Selection & Fit (jedpsych-topic-selection)
The Journal of Educational Psychology publishes original, primary psychological research pertaining to education across all ages and educational levels (检索于 2026-06；以官网为准). The bar is a finding that is theoretically grounded, methodologically rigorous, and educationally consequential — it should change how psychologists understand learning, motivation, achievement, or instruction and matter for learners in schools, classrooms, or online settings. Use this skill to pressure-test fit before investing.
When to trigger
- Choosing among possible projects or framings for JEP
- A reader said the work feels "atheoretical," "not educational," or "just a lab effect"
- Deciding between a single study, a multi-study package, or a meta-analysis
- Unsure whether a measurement/validation paper belongs here (it usually does not)
The fit test
A strong JEP paper usually clears all four:
- Educational relevance. The phenomenon is about learning, motivation, engagement, achievement, reading/math/science learning, assessment, self-regulation, or instruction — and the result has a defensible implication for educational practice or policy. State who in education inherits the claim.
- Psychological theory. A learning/motivation/cognitive mechanism predicts the effect; this is a
psychological research journal, not a program-evaluation outlet (see
jedpsych-theory-and-hypotheses). - Rigor for the setting. Adequately powered for its design — and if students are nested in classes
or schools, the design and analysis must respect that nesting (see
jedpsych-study-design,jedpsych-data-analysis). - Ecological validity. It speaks to real educational contexts, not only a stripped lab analog — field trials, authentic tasks, and real learners strengthen fit.
Manuscript type
- Primary empirical article — a completed experiment, randomized field trial, quasi-experiment, or longitudinal study with a learning-relevant outcome.
- Multi-study article — several studies that build one cumulative claim (lab → classroom, mechanism → boundary, replication → extension); each study must add inference.
- Meta-analysis — published occasionally, only for exceptionally important syntheses pertinent to educational psychology; follow APA meta-analysis reporting standards.
- Out of scope (usually): reliability/validity studies of a specific test or instrument.
Fit scoring — worked example (illustrative)
Score a candidate against the four gates before investing. A reading-intervention project, two framings:
Candidate A (off-fit): a lab study showing a memory-encoding effect on word
lists, N = 60 undergraduates, no link to instruction.
Educational relevance ✗ Theory ✓ Rigor ~ (small) Ecological ✗
Verdict: off-fit for JEP → general cognition outlet, or rebuild as a
classroom learning study with an instructional implication.
Candidate B (strong): cluster-randomized comprehension-strategy intervention,
48 classrooms (~1,100 students), pretest covariate, transfer outcome.
Educational relevance ✓ (classroom reading) Theory ✓ (strategy-instruction
mechanism) Rigor ✓ (cluster-powered) Ecological ✓ (real classrooms)
Verdict: strong fit → primary empirical article.
Manuscript-type decision rules
| If the work is... | Target type | Why |
|---|---|---|
| One completed learning study, results in hand | Primary empirical article | the standard JEP slot |
| A cumulative claim built across studies | Multi-study article | each study must add inference, not repeat |
| A prospective classroom/school trial, not yet run | Primary article (preregister) | settle nesting + power before recruiting |
| A field-defining quantitative synthesis | Meta-analysis | only if "exceptionally important"; follow MARS |
| Validation of one instrument | Specialty measurement journal | JEP does not typically publish these |
Reviewer / editor pushback at the fit stage
- "Interesting psychology, but where is the education?" → name the instructional or policy implication and the real-setting evidence; if there is none, the venue is wrong.
- "This is program evaluation, not psychological research" → foreground the learning/motivation mechanism the study tests, not just whether the program worked.
- "Underpowered for a classroom effect" → power at the level of randomization; a student-level N hides a
small number of clusters (route to
jedpsych-study-design).
Anti-patterns
- A lab effect with no plausible bridge to learning or instruction
- A pure program evaluation with no psychological mechanism or theory
- A single-instrument reliability/validity paper (out of scope)
- A classroom study powered and pitched as if students were independent
- A meta-analysis pitched as routine rather than field-defining
Output format
【Question / effect】one sentence
【Educational relevance】who in education inherits the claim
【Theory】the learning/motivation mechanism
【Rigor + setting】powered for its design? ecologically valid?
【Type】Primary empirical / Multi-study / Meta-analysis
【Fit verdict】strong / needs reframing / off-fit (why)
【Next】jedpsych-theory-and-hypotheses
Supplementary resources
../../resources/external_tools.md— power for nested designs, preregistration tools../../resources/official-source-map.md— JEP aims, scope, and accepted manuscript types
Version History
- 1839142 Current 2026-07-05 13:36
