At all levels of education the assessment of learning is generally regarded as an integral part of teachers' work. For early childhood teachers, i.e., those who work with children in the age-range birth to six years, there are very particular considerations arising from the characteristics of young learners and the nature of early learning. This…

One major issue social science research is faced with concerns the methodological schism and internecine "warfare" that divides the field. This paper examines critically what is referred to as combined methods research, and the claim that this is the best methodology for addressing complex social issues. The paper discredits this claim on the…

This mixed-methods research investigates the high school college preparatory achievements and college success of 50 high school graduates who participated in Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID) and belonged to groups underrepresented in higher education. High performance on the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) and…

This article describes the Voluntary Support for Education (VSE) Survey, an instrument created by the Council for Aid to Education. Our objective is to explain VSE's potential value as a tool to inform both institutional and academic research regarding fund-raising activities at community colleges. Of particular interest is how the data available…

Minority researchers have traditionally exhibited a need for and interest in investigating non-mainstream issues involving diverse communities. Since faculty at colleges and universities within the United States are largely Caucasian, research on issues relevant to marginalized groups is lacking. This three-stage Delphi study was designed to…

The purpose of this conceptual paper is to describe a design that mixes single-case (sometimes referred to as single-subject) and qualitative methods, hereafter referred to as a single-case mixed methods design (SCD-MM). Minimal attention has been given to the topic of applying qualitative methods to SCD work in the literature. These two…

The characterization of students' cognitive biases is of central importance in the development of curriculum and teaching strategies that better support student learning in science. In particular, the identification of shortcut reasoning procedures (heuristics) used by students to reduce cognitive load can help us devise strategies to foster the…

Selection bias is a problem for mathematics education researchers interested in using observational rather than experimental data to make causal inferences about the effects of different instructional methods in mathematics on student outcomes. Propensity score methods represent 1 approach to dealing with such selection bias. This article…

Most models of mixed methods research design provide equal emphasis of qualitative and quantitative data analyses and interpretation. Other models stress one method more than the other. The present article is a discourse about the investigator's decision to employ a mixed method design to examine special education teachers' advocacy and…

Health and social care researchers, in their haste to "belong" to academia, have adopted the system of mixed methodology research, overestimating its ability to reveal the truth and occasionally imprisoning their thought in one system. In this article, some of the assumptions underpinning mixed methodology research and its discourse are subjected…

Peer-assisted learning (PAL) strategies, such as the reciprocal style of teaching, have been shown to be effective in developing motor skills. Despite this research, little is currently understood of how PAL strategies influence the teaching-learning process. The purpose of this study was to use a didactic methodology (Amade-Escot, 2005) to…

Body mass index (BMI) is increasingly recognized as an inadequate measure for determining obesity in children. Therefore, the aim within this study was to investigate other indirect methods of body fat assessment that could potentially be used in place of BMI. Twenty-four children (boys: 13.8 [plus or minus] 0.8 yr; girls: 13.3 [plus or minus] 0.5…

This article explores the practical relevance of pragmatism as a research paradigm through the example of a piece of pragmatic research that not only used both quantitative and qualitative research methods but also exploited the inherent duality of the data analyzed. Thus, the article aims to make the case that pragmatism as a research paradigm…

A growing body of research suggests that the writing ability of international second language learners (IL2) and US-resident second language learners, also referred to as Generation 1.5 (G1.5), differs, despite a dearth of substantial empirical evidence supporting such claims. The present study provides much-needed empirical evidence concerning…

Within the (Computer-Supported) Collaborative Learning (CS)CL research community, there has been an extensive dialogue on theories and perspectives on learning from collaboration, approaches to scaffold (script) the collaborative process, and most recently research methodology. In contrast, the issue of assessment of collaborative learning has…