This case study describes the adoption of a mixed-methods approach to explore provision for 2-year-olds in England at a time when funding for free places for disadvantaged children became available. A literature review was carried out to find out about aspects of early childhood provision considered important for 2-year-old children's development,…

A variety of practices and specialised representational systems are required to understand, communicate and construct molecular genetics knowledge. This study describes teachers' use of multimodal representations of molecular genetics concepts and how their strategies and choice of resources were interpreted, understood and used by students to…

This study investigated Iranian high school teachers' conceptions of effective teaching and examined the relationship of those conceptions to their teaching practices. The authors tried to achieve the purpose through questionnaires, observation, and interview. These teachers identified "being student-focused" and "being…

A community of practice (CoP) is a group of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it as they interact regularly. Higher education leaders are attracted to CoPs because they are a peer-based model of learning with colleagues, which works well for professionals such as faculty. These authors identified…

Background/Context: Mixed methods research conveys multiple advantages to the study of complex phenomena and large organizations or systems. The benefits are derived from drawing on the strengths of qualitative methods to answer questions about how and why a phenomenon occurs and those of quantitative methods to examine how often a phenomenon…

For the past 20 years, countless reports have been issued calling for reform of undergraduate education to improve student learning, persistence, and graduation rates for students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) majors. However, by many measures, recommendations in these reports have not been widely implemented. While…

A successful digital conversion for classrooms, districts, and states is not determined by the technology, but by how technology enables teaching and learning. The purpose of our multisite case study was to document digital instructional strategies teachers use to enhance and transform student learning, and align that use with learning research.…

This study was carried out as an international cooperative research project supported by a Fulbright Scholar award to investigate attitudes and perceptions towards bilingual education, and to extract key findings on effective pedagogy in bilingual schools in the Region of Madrid, where expansion of bilingual programs has been rapidly increasing.…

This study utilized an explanatory sequential mixed methods approach to explore randomly assigned treatment and control participants' frequency of inquiry instruction in secondary science classrooms. Eleven treatment participants received professional development (PD) that emphasized a structured approach to inquiry instruction, while 10 control…

Students' struggles with algebra are well documented. Prior to the introduction of functions, mathematics is typically focused on applying a set of arithmetic operations to compute an answer. The introduction of functions, however, marks the point at which mathematics begins to focus on building up abstractions as a way to solve complex problems.…

For accreditation and programmatic decision making, education school administrators use inter-rater reliability analyses to judge credibility of student-teacher assessments. Although weak levels of agreement between university-appointed supervisors and cooperating teachers are usually interpreted to indicate that the process is not being…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of a reading intervention program used with second and third grade students identified as not meeting grade level expectancy. Studies have indicated students who are not reading at grade level by the end of the third grade have an increasingly difficult time achieving at the rate of their…

This article presents findings from an investigation of the overall effectiveness of Michigan's Freedom to Learn (FTL) One-to-One initiative. The major goal of the FTL initiative was to help students to gain 21st century knowledge and skills while increasing their learning and achievement through the integration of over 20,000 laptop computers…

The purpose of this mixed-method study was to evaluate a Higher Education Administration doctoral program, to understand student perceptions of program quality, to improve both student satisfaction and retention to degree completion, and to plan for the future. Findings from survey data and focus group interviews indicated program strengths to…