The Centre for Applied Language Studies (CALS), founded in 1997, brings together researchers and postgraduate students from several disciplines in language studies, and is structured in three research clusters: New learning environments; Discourse, society and identity; and Plurilingualism and language policy. There is a certain amount of…

This paper describes two parallel research programmes exploring educational practice/praxis. The first, including a theory of "practice architectures", aims to contribute to contemporary practice theory that views practice from the perspective of a spectator. The second aims to contribute to an emerging (practical philosophy) tradition of…

In an effort to teach students the basic knowledge of research methods and the realities of conducting research in the context of agencies in the community, faculty developed and implemented a service learning model for teaching research and program evaluation to foundation-year MSW students. A year-long foundation course was designed in which one…

School librarians know the importance of collaboration. They cannot run effective school library programs unless they work closely with classroom teachers. They have learned that deep collaboration is a fluid process that evolves over time. Only as connections are made and relationships are forged can real instructional progress occur. Yet it…

To improve our understanding of the factors that influence persistence rates in STEM field majors, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation provided a grant to the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute in 2007 to study the question. The five papers in the symposium represent the output of the project. This introduction explains the motivation for…

This article reports on an unconventional collaborative event called Real-Time Research, a project that brought 25 participants together from radically divergent fields for a playful and somewhat improvisational investigation of what it means to do games and learning research. Real-Time Research took the form of a two-part workshop session at the…

This article reports on one aspect of a larger study which aimed to explore the context-specific experiences of English teachers at tertiary institutions in China (Wette & Barkhuizen, 2007). Data were collected during a professional development program run in the summer of 2006. The program aimed to cover recent trends in the field of second…

This article describes the results of a qualitative case study evaluating a research mentorship program in community care settings in Ontario, Canada. The purpose of the program was to build evaluation and research capacity among staff of community care agencies through a mentorship program. Data were collected through in-depth, semi-structured…

This account identifies some of the tensions that became apparent in a large interdisciplinary technology-enhanced learning project as its members attempted to maintain their commitment to responsive, participatory research and development in naturalistic research settings while also "enacting" these commitments in formal research review…

The discussion of the gap between theory and practice has a long tradition in educational psychology and especially in research on learning and instruction. Starting with a short analysis of more or less elaborated approaches focusing on this problem, a complex procedure called "integrative research approach", specialized in reducing the gap…

Presents methodology used in collecting data for study of the relationship of sexual orientation and social sex-role to the protection of civil liberties. The methodology is designed to determine how departures in sexual orientation and social sex-role are the basis for the abridgment of civil liberties. (Author)

Which factors promote student transfer from California Community Colleges (CCC) to baccalaureate-granting institutions? How do community college practices support this transition? Which student behaviors and characteristics particularly facilitate their movement to four-year colleges and universities? The Research and Planning Group for California…

The current, conventional approach to research does little to strengthen scholars' participation in civic life. However, models of research that promote more democratic inquiry methods, more reciprocal relationships between researchers and their subjects, and new collaborations between research institutions and communities are emerging and being…

This paper assumes that democratic, grassroots art is a basic goal of arts developers and community arts leaders, and attempts to delineate steps to this goal (Author)

Project "vita" (similar to the individual's professional vita) is proposed as a documentation technique for providing detailed but manageable descriptions of large research and development projects. Two field trials, projects to develop new evaluation methods and technology for storage and retrieval of full-text material, illustrate use…