Qualitative researchers often turn to focus groups as an efficient and effective way to gather data in a collective context. A common critique is that they play into power dynamics present at the site, privileging dominant, high status, and more vocal participants. Traditional focus group structures also rely on participants to trust the…

This article outlines the rationale for adopting a mixed methods approach within randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and explores challenges associated in doing so. Taking the example of the EASE Back feasibility and pilot study (Evaluating Acupuncture and Standard care for pregnant womEn with "BACK" pain: ISRCTN49955124), we detail why…

This study aims to explore the quality-oriented management of educational innovation at Madrasah Ibtidaiyah. Quality-Oriented Management of Educational Innovation is the process of managing new resources (ideas, practices, objects, methods) in the field of education to achieve educational goals or solve the problem of education. New ideas,…

This study investigates how international visitor students studying temporarily at a public university in Turkey perceive teaching, language and culture. Qualitative explanatory single case study method was employed in the study. The data were obtained through face to face interview with 10 participants, and a focus group interview with 3…

This manual is a practical training guide for graduate and undergraduate research assistants (RAs) working in the Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary. It may also be applicable to research assistants working in other fields or institutions. The purpose of this manual is to train RAs on how to plan and conduct focus groups for…

The Education District and Circuit Offices in South Africa are mandated by the Department of Basic Education to support schools under their jurisdiction. Reasons for the lack of such support to schools have been highlighted in various reports and research findings. This paper examines the role that properly constructed school improvement plans,…

Context: Peer-assisted learning (PAL) has been shown to benefit students across educational levels. Current research has investigated perceptions of PAL, postgraduate impact, as well as prevalence. This study investigated athletic training students' perceptions of an intentional PAL pedagogy on both the peer-student and peer-tutor. In this study,…

Metaphors can be used in qualitative research to illuminate the meanings of participant experiences and examine phenomena from insightful and creative perspectives. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how I utilized "trenzas" (braids) as a metaphorical and analytical tool for understanding the experiences and perspectives of…

This paper evidences the importance of maintaining a dynamic interpretive stance in e-learning research. In particular, it shows how a rigorous methodology, tailored to the research question, overlooked the importance of power and knowledge in technology acceptance research for education. It was perhaps the affordance of the mixed methods design,…

This article explores qualitative shadowing as an interpretivist methodology, and explains how two researchers participating simultaneously in data collection using a video recorder, contextual interviews and video-stimulated recall interviews, conducted a qualitative shadowing study at six early childhood centres in Norway. This paper emerged…

The primary objective of this article is to evaluate the design variables of a newly developed teaching intervention, "The Amazing Tax Race". It comprises a race against time in which accounting students participate within teams in multiple tax-related activities so that they are exposed to pervasive skills. The findings provide…

This paper shares analytical insights on the position, challenges and potential for promoting Open Educational Resources (OER) in African Open Distance and eLearning (ODeL) institutions. The researchers sought to use a participatory research approach as described by Krishnaswamy (2004), in convening a sequence of two workshops at the Open…

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the effect of captioned vs. non-captioned instructional videos on the motivation and achievement. To this end, a pre-test and post-test experimental design was used on 109 sophomores from a Turkish state university. Videos with and without captions of the unit in question were prepared by the…

In evaluation and applied social research, focus groups may be used to gather different kinds of evidence (e.g., opinion, tacit knowledge). In this article, we argue that making focus group design choices explicitly in relation to the type of evidence required would enhance the empirical value and rigor associated with focus group utilization. We…

This article emanates from an in-depth qualitative study that examined ideological beliefs among Indigenous parents regarding school desegregation and school "choice" policies in South Africa. The author discusses the politics of qualitative research design and methodology along two primary dimensions: decolonizing research and the…