For school districts, the increasing importance of using data for continuous improvement has become part of the educational landscape under accountability. In many ways, educators have become inundated with data but not always in ways that provide them with a full picture to adequately weigh decisions for their specific context. One way to use…

Mixed methods research evolved in response to the observed limitations of both quantitative and qualitative designs and is a more complex method. The purpose of this paper was to examine mixed methods research in an attempt to demystify the design thereby allowing those less familiar with its design an opportunity to utilize it in future research.…

Higher education has seen an increase in the number of faculty conducting scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL). Unfortunately, the momentum of this movement is somewhat thwarted by debates over which methodology should take center stage. The discussion often pitches quantitative experimentation against qualitative approaches and mistakenly…

The goal of this study was to investigate the views of school staff, early adolescents, and parents about which behaviors constitute bullying or teen dating violence (TDV), with attention focused on perceived overlap between the two. To achieve this aim, a mixed-methods design was used to quantitatively investigate the factors associated with…

Creative ability can be developed and improved through intervention and training. This study presents a unique and innovative intervention program for enhancing creative thinking among children, focusing on divergent thinking skills. The program was designed as a short-term (10 weeks) training and conducted with 150 school students ranging in age…

This research methods Essay details the usefulness of critical theoretical frameworks and critical mixed-methodological approaches for life sciences education research on broadening participation in the life sciences. First, I draw on multidisciplinary research to discuss critical theory and methodologies. Then, I demonstrate the benefits of these…

The Families of Merit Program was designed as an adult education course that could build individual self-efficacy and parental self-efficacy to effect outcomes that would benefit their child and the school. Building this self-efficacy in a community where those children served are predominately in poverty presents a compounded challenge. The…

In a recently changing Polish academic environment--following the large-scale higher education reforms of 2009-2012--different academic generations have to cope with different challenges. Polish academics have been strongly divided generationally, not only in terms of what they think and how they work but also in terms of what is academically…

Teacher wellbeing and performance is affected by their ability to cope with the demands of the profession. This pilot nonrandomized, waitlist-controlled study investigated the impact of a mindfulness intervention (Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction) on teachers' wellbeing, self-regulation ability and classroom performance applying a mixed-method…

This study addressed how different instructional strategies affected preservice elementary teachers' levels of math anxiety and their achievement in a math content course while considering descriptions of their experiences in the course in relation to their math anxiety and achievement. The instructional strategies used were traditional teaching…

While districts and schools continue to place more emphasis on personalized instruction and tiers of literacy interventions, more students are continuing to reach middle school without the ability to read on grade level. Much of the emphasis on the attainment of literacy skills occurs in the elementary grades. As a result, middle grades' literacy…

While districts and schools continue to place more emphasis on personalized instruction and tiers of literacy interventions, more students are continuing to reach middle school without the ability to read on grade level. Much of the emphasis on the attainment of literacy skills occurs in the elementary grades. As a result, middle grades' literacy…

Social network research on teachers and schools has risen exponentially in recent years as an innovative method to reveal the role of social networks in education. However, scholars are still exploring ways to incorporate traditional quantitative methods of Social Network Analysis (SNA) with qualitative approaches to social network research. This…

When people rapidly judge the truth of claims presented with or without related but nonprobative photos, the photos tend to inflate the subjective truth of those claims--a "truthiness" effect (Newman et al., 2012). For example, people more often judged the claim "Macadamia nuts are in the same evolutionary family as peaches" to…

Purpose: Educational institutes must embrace the principles of total quality management (TQM) if they seek to remain competitive, and survive and succeed in the long run. An educational institution must embrace the principles of quality management and incorporate them into all of their activities. Starting with a theoretical background, the paper…