Competition is reported in the general education literature as having a largely detrimental impact upon student engagement and long-term motivation, yet competition has long been an accepted part of the music education ensemble landscape. Adjudicated ensemble competitions and competition-festivals are commonplace in most Australian states, as…

Preparing students to achieve the lofty goal of functional scientific literacy entails addressing the normative and non-normative facets of socioscientific issues (SSI) such as scientific processes, the nature of science (NOS) and diverse sociocultural perspectives. SSI instructional approaches have demonstrated some efficacy for promoting…

Through a program wide survey (n = 87) and qualitative data of five case participants, this mixed methods study explores how teachers develop as urban classroom managers throughout their first year. Results indicate teachers learned from programmatic training and personnel, school personnel, and classroom experience. Specifically, personnel who…

This paper draws on findings from a study of 'inspiring' teachers in order to illustrate the way in which the chosen mixed methods design contributed to the success of the research in addressing its research aims. The study investigated the concept of 'inspiring' and 'inspirational' teaching through recruiting a purposive sample of 17 primary and…

This paper describes and justifies the protocol for a research project investigating regional secondary school consolidation reforms in New South Wales, Australia. The study is designed to describe the experiences of those directly involved in the transition to a consolidated school in a way that has so far eluded educational leadership…

Social justice research is popular in education, but social scientists have limited emancipatory methodological procedures, especially in scale construction approaches that empower marginalized communities in defining their own lived experience. Therefore, this study develops the Transformativist Measurement Development Methodology, exemplified…

This mixed methods study focused on adolescents who rejected conventional singular racial/ethnic categorization by selecting multiple race/ethnicities or writing descriptions of "Other" racial/ethnic identities in response to a survey item asking them to identify their race/ethnicity. Written responses reflected eight distinct categories…

In classroom, scientific contents are increasingly communicated through visual forms of representations. Students' learning outcomes rely on their ability to read and understand pictorial information. Understanding pictorial information in biology requires cognitive effort and can be challenging to students. Yet evidence-based knowledge about…

In this research, the aim is to determine what the social studies teachers think about the interdisciplinary structure of the social studies course and the educational situation. Likert type questionnaire and semi-structured interview form were used as data collection tools. The questionnaire was applied to 150 teachers working in 58 secondary…

The aim of this study was to determine secondary school students' choice of design features for digital textbooks. As a part of the research--which was conducted using a mixed technique--a literature review was carried out to source points to consider in the designing of digital textbooks and experts' opinions were obtained. Based on the results,…

This study examines teacher perceptions of their experiences with Project Based Learning (PBL) at a secondary school in Western Canada. This PBL initiative included English language arts, mathematics, science, and digital literacy courses and all the grade nines at this large secondary school. This article reports on two teacher focus group…

This mixed-methods study applied a decision-making theoretical framework to an investigation of teacher grading in a large urban school district in California. A sample of 251 high school teachers of core subjects were surveyed, and 15 teachers participated in four focus group interviews in order provide data on the influences, rationale, and…

In this case, I describe the "Paths on Life's Way (Paths)" project. The "Paths" project is the only longitudinal study of its kind in British Columbia and one of the few longitudinal studies in Canada. The research, now spanning 22 years-with a 28-year follow-up underway-is designed to provide a detailed examination of the life…

The main purpose of the present study is to examine the attitudes, perceptions and experiences of the teachers participating in the planning of teaching in the context of the Lesson Study. The present work, which is part of a wider research effort, followed a mixed methodological planning for reasons of triangulation. The survey was conducted from…

The study focused on exploring science teachers' perception of classroom assessment in secondary schools of Bangladesh. A mixed method approach was used to explore science teachers' perception of classroom assessment by identifying their concept about classroom assessment and how they conduct assessment activities in science classes. A total of…