Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the merits of lesson study (LS) as a research approach for research in (science) education. A lesson was developed to introduce students to model-based reasoning: a higher order thinking skill that is seen as one of the major reasoning strategies in science. Design/methodology/approach: Participants…

Innovation has become an increasingly important concept for Australian businesses in enabling them to continue to compete in an international market, but where does vocational education and training (VET) sit in this? To date, VET has been largely overlooked by the National Innovation and Science Agenda as a potential contributor in this field.…

A learning path has been developed on system dynamical graphical modelling, integrated into the Dutch lower secondary physics curriculum. As part of the developmental research for this learning path, students' understanding of the relation structures shown in the diagrams of graphical system dynamics based models has been investigated. One of our…

This article argues that strong interrelations between methodological and theoretical advances exist. Progress in, especially comparative, methods may have important impacts on theory evaluation. By using the example of the "Varieties of Capitalism" approach and an international comparison of higher education systems, it can be shown…

Educational effectiveness research (EER) has accumulated much knowledge in the areas of school effectiveness research (SER), teacher effectiveness research (TER) and school/system improvement research (SSIR). Yet many schools and educational systems are not making enough use of the material and their insights. The article reviews evidence of…

Purpose: The overall purpose of the European Union-funded Leadership Improvement for Student Achievement (LISA) project was to explore how leadership styles, as conceptualized in the developed dynamic holistic leadership framework, directly or indirectly affect student achievement at the lower secondary level of education in seven European…

As part of the Teacher Education Research and Development Programme (TEP), a project focusing on "Stimulation of practice-based teacher education research", was undertaken by Dr. Roger Deacon and Dr. Ben Parker, in conjunction with the Centre for Education Policy Development (CEPD). As part of the project, a set of research guidelines…

The concomitant-variable latent-class model is described for situations with continuous explanatory variables, and an EM estimation procedure to estimate the model is presented. The model is applied to the study of crime among ethnic groups in the Netherlands, and its utility is demonstrated. (SLD)

Responds to "Birth Order and Intelligence: Further Tests of the Confluence Model" by Robert D. Retherford and William H. Sewell. Reviews their arguments and suggests that their analyses of the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study data support rather than contradict the model. (CJS)

Computer simulations can facilitate the building of models of natural phenomena in research, such as in the molecular life sciences. In order to introduce molecular life science students to the use of computer simulations for model building, a digital case was developed in which students build a model of a pattern formation process in…

This paper discusses two methodological issues regarding the analysis of longitudinal data using structural equation modeling that emerged during the reconsideration of the analysis of a recent study on the relationship between academic motivation and language achievement in elementary education [Stoel R.D., Peetsma, T.T.D. and Roeleveld, J.…

This paper puts forth a data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach to estimating higher education institutions' per-student education costs (PSCs) in an effort to redress a number of methodological problems endemic to such estimations, particularly the allocation of shared expenditures between education and other institutional activities. An example…

This paper presents a hierarchical Bayes circumplex model for ordinal ratings data. The circumplex model was proposed to represent the circular ordering of items in psychological testing by imposing inequalities on the correlations of the items. We provide a specification of the circumplex, propose identifying constraints and conjugate priors for…

A technique is presented to transform incomplete categorical data into complete data by imputing appropriate scores into missing cells. A solution of the optimization problem is suggested, and relevant psychometric theory is discussed. The average correlation should be at least 0.50 before the method becomes practical. (SLD)

The six chapters of this theme issue consider three trends in educational effectiveness research: (1) integration of effectiveness phenomena at different levels, (2) a more model-driven approach than in the past, and (3) increased complexity of analysis tools and techniques to suit the new emphasis on process. (SLD)