This article is a response to the methodological problems I experienced during fieldwork. It follows that the article is an experiment of creating alternative possibilities for thinking about ethnocentrism as a phenomenon in transformation in a contemporary, innovative, higher educational setting. Throughout the article, I argue for the…

Background: In science education today, there is an emerging focus on what is happening in situ, making use of an array of analytical traditions. Common practice is to use one specific analytical framing within a research project, but there are projects that make use of multiple analytical framings to further the understanding of the same data,…

When doing research, or for that matter working in school-age childcare, the researcher/teacher is required to develop a plan for her/his work in spite of knowing that unexpected things will happen. This article aims to explore the relationship between the process of planning and unexpected events in childcare practice and action research. The…

Previous research presented in this journal and elsewhere has suggested that vocational education is highly gender segregated and it is the heavy industrial sectors such as industry, vehicle and construction programmes that mainly attract boys with an anti-school attitude who are not interested in academic school work. However, there are good…

The neo-liberal restructuring of academia justifies research concerning what constitutes academic work, what it means to be an academic researcher and how researchers manoeuvre in academia. The aim of this article is to investigate how this reshaping of higher education affects how research careers are formed and impacts on "becoming…

Research and scholarship into educational effectiveness research (EER) is comprehensively reviewed from the UK, The Netherlands, the US, Cyprus, Belgium, Sweden, France, Germany, New Zealand, Australia, and other societies, dating from the field's origins in the 1970s. Issues include its history, methodological and theoretical advances, scientific…

The purpose of this article is to point to some patterns dealt with in Swedish research with 1 to 3-year-old children in preschool. The analyses focus on questions posed, theoretical perspectives, methods and results. The results give a unique picture of how toddlers participate, interact and communicate while engaged in how to master various…

This article explores the deployment of triangulation in the service of uncovering subjugated knowledge and promoting social change for women and other oppressed groups. Feminist approaches to mixed methods praxis create a tight link between the research problem and the research design. An analysis of selected case studies of feminist praxis…

When an interview is used as a research technique, the process of the dialogue between the experimenter and the subject is a part of the experimental conditions. The dialogue can be extensively structured, or it can be open-ended. Though the latter situation may provide more information about the subject's thought processes, there is a greater…

Empirical information is presented on how researchers at Swedish institutes of education perceive, structure, and define educational and psychological problems. The collection, evaluation, and presentation of the results of the study were made on the basis of system theoretic assumptions in that the description and analysis of the initial phase of…

As expressed in this essay, the basic aim of pedagogical research on teaching methods should be to describe existing practices and to work out theories which will allow researchers to explain the causal relationships leading to extant teaching practices, which in their own turn reinforce the existing educational pattern. Research in the area of…

Illustrates problems facing researchers trying to demonstrate causal relationships between types of nonparental care and differences between groups of Swedish children. Argues that efforts must be made to validate and interpret differences that are found. Indicates ways to avoid misinterpretation of differences that are attributable to…