The Infant Parent Training Institute (IPTI) at Jewish Family and Children's Service of Greater Boston offers integrated clinical and theoretical infant mental health training. The curriculum reflects the belief that nurturing and reflective relationships promote optimal learning and growth. A specialty in infant mental health requires knowledge…

Discusses the development and results of a naturalistic study of the instructional-design process for three permanent museum exhibits. Examines design goals, design resources, design techniques, constraints such as budget and scheduling, how museum staff makes decisions during the design process, and implications for instructional designers.…

A response to Richard E. Clark's conclusion that media research needs to stop emphasizing descriptive research and focus on prescriptive research designs and questions, this paper reiterates the distinctions between disciplines and applied fields of study, and suggests that these distinctions should be evident in the descriptive/prescriptive…

Egon G. Guba and Yvonna S. Lincoln were among the first to develop a set of extensive criteria for establishing naturalistic inquiry as a disciplined research methodology. The naturalistic paradigm--also called post-positivist, ethnographic, phenomenological, and qualitative--has gained acceptance as a legitimate alternative to the previously…

Qualitative research is a model for systematic, data-based inquiry. It has been used widely in the social sciences, and it has a growing acceptance in educational research. Its purpose is to describe and understand a particular, bounded social setting. The differences between quantitative and qualitative research involve the methods employed at…

Discusses the need to develop the concept of user-based relevance for the benefit of users and for the meaningful development of future research in information retrieval. Characteristics of users' criteria of relevance are examined; and research methodology models are considered, including naturalistic inquiry versus scientific, or rationalistic,…

The transition to adult life for students with reading and writing challenges is an area that is not often addressed. The purpose of this article is to relate the informal assessment process to the broader context of high stakes assessment, high school exit exams, diploma options, and transition planning; identify the competencies needed for a…

The revolution in hard sciences is explored, from the Cartesian-Newtonian worldview to the Heisenbergian universe, and consideration is given to whether the conventional, Cartesian model is a serviceable one for research in the social/applied sciences. Five axioms comprising the existing paradigm of logical positivism are outlined (reality,…

The training of researchers in the educational technology field has continued in the traditional vein of the experimental paradigm. This document describes a workshop presented to balance that training and to prepare students to undertake research in a non-traditional way. The workshop aimed to acquaint students with non-causal naturalistic…