This paper explores methods that researchers, including students, use to gain access to research being conducted in their subject areas. I conducted a review of the literature on research methodology to find out how the access problem is defined and the points highlighted by scholars. The review was based on articles accessed through databases…

Increasingly PhD graduates who wish to take up traditional academic positions (full-time teaching and research leading to permanence) are unable to find such jobs. They end up in fixed-term appointments as post-doctoral fellows or researchers on others' grants. Few studies document their experiences and most that do draw on data from the late…

Second language (L2) writing research embraces a plurality of epistemological stances, theories, and occasionally, competing paradigms. Some researchers ask whether it is possible, or even desirable, to develop a comprehensive theory of second language writing. This is an important question in view of the fact that students learn their L2 under…

In this article, the role of theory in higher education research is problematised using a communities of practice framework. Drawing on a case study derived from the author's own published work and doctoral study, the article concludes that the differential uses of theory within communities of research practice can be fruitfully explored, in part,…

In this article, we outline a course wherein the instructors teach students how to conduct rigorous qualitative research. We discuss the four major distinct, but overlapping, phases of the course: conceptual/theoretical, technical, applied, and emergent scholar. Students write several qualitative reports, called qualitative notebooks, which…

The history of the quinine synthesis can be used as a case study to emphasize that science is influenced by social and historical processes. The first efforts toward the synthesis of this substance, which until recently was the only treatment for malaria, were by Perkin in 1856 when, trying to obtain quinine, he synthesized mauveine. Since then,…

We revisit a long-held assumption in human resource management, organizational behavior, and industrial and organizational psychology that individual performance follows a Gaussian (normal) distribution. We conducted 5 studies involving 198 samples including 633,263 researchers, entertainers, politicians, and amateur and professional athletes.…

Elise Boulding wrote academically to help to create and influence the field of peace education, and lived a life that exemplified it. Her life integrated theory and practice and exemplified peace "praxis" as the "craft and skills of doing peace" and "the integration of thought and action". For Boulding, peace education occurred at all levels,…

This article discusses the adoption of a wiki to support the processes of collaborative research between members of an international team involved in the project MyPlace: MyMusic. The focus is on how new technological communications, here specifically the wiki, can enable and transform the methods and processes of research. We propose two main…

Professionals increasingly must collaborate very closely, such as through inter-professional work arrangements. This involves learning both "in" and "for" collaboration. Some educational researchers have turned to complexity science to better understand these learning dynamics. This discussion asks, How useful is complexity science for examining…

The purpose of this article is to move readers toward a deeper understanding of and widened respect for autoethnography's capacity as an empirical endeavor. An argument is presented in favor of autoethnography as empirical by translating information from its epistemological and methodological history across the AERA standards for reporting…

This article explores the ethical implications of using incentives to encourage and recognise youth participation in research. While the complexity of research projects and the diversity of research subjects necessarily preclude simple solutions, the author argues that social research can successfully and ethically use a mix of extrinsic and…

This paper reports and analyses findings from a qualitative study that explored the impact of organizational policy, cultures and support structures on the research pathways of early career researchers within one Australian university. The author captured the perspectives and experiences of six early and six senior researchers and examined the…

Although there is much research related to the first-year student in higher education and first-year retention, a dominant focus of this has been on students' assimilation into higher education. However, there is a noticeable increase in higher education researchers who advocate for a more active role of institutions to adapt to first-year…

The study purpose was to assess preliminary validity and reliability of the Physical Education and School Sport Environment Inventory (PESSEI), which was designed to audit physical education (PE) and school sport spaces and resources. PE teachers from eight English secondary schools completed the PESSEI. Criterion validity was assessed by…