Stereotypes about subcultures (e.g., Freaks, Nerds, Stoners) have become increasingly utilized to describe subgroups in society. For youth, they are tools for bullying and a way of describing bullies. They are also mundane styles that describe qualities about all of us in some limited capacity. This case study reflects upon online research methods…

This case study investigates the practical and methodological challenges associated with conducting interviews with high-ranking public figures ("elites") in politically fragile environments, with a particular focus on education and gender issues in Turkey. The original research utilised a qualitative methodology, emphasising an…

Many countries keep official records of parliamentary debates. In the UK, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and Singapore, these transcriptions are referred to as Hansard, providing a rich resource for researchers exploring the historical and contextual background of governmental policy and legislation. This case study draws on the original…

The case study presented considers the challenges and rewards of undertaking cross-cultural comparative research. Through discussing a mixed method project, there is an exploration of how it is important not to assume shared understandings of both research approaches and subject-specific terminology. Research approaches vary across countries and…

This case study presents a study in the field of education with children from a socially vulnerable sector of Santiago, Chile. My specific research interest was the discourses that children express about their learning experience. I consider the learning process to be a socially situated phenomenon rather than an individual and generic one. Some…

The issue of quality education is a critical topic of discussion, for South Africa facing the challenge of implementation amid a plethora of progressive policies. The purpose of the research reported here is to describe the procedures undertaken to explore the feasibility of implementing a monitoring system in the South African context. The…

The purpose of the study was to research good practices at three school levels--preschool, compulsory school, and secondary school--that contribute to the social and academic success of immigrant children and students. The project integrates four subthemes and main research areas, including children/students, teachers, leaders, and policy. We used…

This case is based on our cross-cultural study of Israeli middle-class mothers' engagement in their children's education. The mothers in our study belong to three social-cultural groups: Palestinian Israeli, Russian immigrants, and Israeli-born Jewish. These three groups participate today in the Israeli middle class, albeit with different…

As a follow on to my earlier research with beginning teachers, in which I investigated their propensity for pedagogical change, when they faced difficult and unfamiliar cultural situations in school, this research was undertaken to test the findings on a larger scale. The research from which this case study is drawn uses a greater number of…

This case study explores the exigencies of a 'native ethnographer' who chose to use a Euro western frame in a study of learning-teaching practices in her country's Carnival mas' camps. I am a native Trinidadian and former educator in the formal education system who used mas'-making practices of the Pre-Lenten Carnival festival as the unit of…

This case is based on research conducted in the context of teacher education and training in Vietnam, which employed narrative inquiry in combination with a self-rated English language proficiency survey and semi-structured interviews to explore the perceptions of Vietnamese primary and secondary English as a foreign language teachers regarding…

In this study, we provide a detailed account of processes involved in applying structural equation modelling to validate a survey instrument -- the students' view of mathematics instrument -- in a new cultural setting. First, we tested the factorial validity of the instruments in Ghana for 12th-grade students (N = 2034, M = 18.49, standard…

Conducting international research presents unique possibilities for peril. Without understanding local context, culture, and norms, data-collection efforts may produce little usable data. This case study reports lessons learned about the importance of involving broad stakeholder groups in the design phase of a study. To inform the design of a…

This case study portrays one part of my MA thesis research, conducted in 2011-2012. The topic of my thesis was gender equality and education policies in post-conflict countries, and the regression analysis described in this case study stands at the center of my thesis. However, I use the results of my regression models to advocate for a different…

In August 2012, I was awarded a Fulbright grant to travel to Malawi, one of the poorest countries in Africa. One critical education issue is that the government has opened its education sector to the donor community. Outside donors identify and define the educational needs of the country and often impose solutions with minimum stakeholder input;…