This paper reports on the discussion at a recent 'salon' on feminist agency. The views of the two invited speakers, who raised concerns about the impact of post-modernism on political projects, are reported. The content of the general discussion around subjectivity, agency and structure are then set out. The group struggled with the possibilities…

As one of the most important concerns in the training of library and informatics-experts, information provision requires a thorough knowledge of professional texts used in different fields. This is, however, due to the sheer number of publications appearing in various periodicals, which is a difficult goal to accomplish when making a thorough…

Economics provides fertile ground, both theoretical and empirical, for institutional researchers interested in higher education costs. (Contains 1 figure.)

Research in education and the training of education researchers are often said to require attention to "epistemological diversity": Researchers ought to be familiar with different ways of knowing and diverse epistemological perspectives. But the notion is unclear. What is "epistemological diversity"? What exactly is "epistemological" about it?…

Education for older adults is increasingly becoming a global phenomenon. Taiwan, a small island in the western Pacific Ocean, has responded to the educational needs of its aging population with the development of its version of the University of the Third Age (U3A). However, the title of U3A has never been used in Taiwan. Taiwanese people call…

All evaluators face the challenge of striving to adhere to the highest possible standards of ethical conduct. Translating the AEA's Guiding Principles and the Joint Committee's Program Evaluation Standards into everyday practice, however, can be a complex, uncertain, and frustrating endeavor. Moreover, acting in an ethical fashion can require…

The purpose of this paper is to understand better the possibilities for practitioner research as a mode of educational inquiry that is yet to be legitimated within the academy. The paper maps the current state of play, and then moves on to consider what might yet be done to optimise its potential to contribute to rigorous new thinking about…

'One goal [of educational research] must be to produce accounts which deny the reader [the] comfort of a shared ground with the author, foreground ambivalence and undermine the authority of their own assertions' (Stronach & MacLure, 1998, p. 57). In this paper the author seeks to do two things. First, he relates the meaning and value of stories in…

This essay offers a diagnosis of what may be at stake in the current preoccupation with defining science-based educational research. The diagnosis unfolds in several readings: The first is a charitable and considerate appraisal that draws attention to the fact that advocating experimental methods as important to a science of educational research…

In recent studies, some researchers were eager for the answer of how to group a perfectly dream team. There are various grouping methods, e.g. random assignment, homogeneous grouping with personality or achievement and heterogeneous grouping with personality or achievement, were proposed. Some instructors could put some students in a team better…

Critical educational research offers the researcher a position and an ethos of comfort. Even the declared recognition of the relativity of principles, norms or criteria so characteristic of much critical research does not prevent it from looking immediately for a way out of this uncomfortable situation i.e. to keep to the idea that comfort (for…

This article reviews the concept of "affordance", a term widely used in the literature on learning and technology to try and explain the properties technologies have. It is argued that the concept has drifted so far from its origins that it is now too ambiguous to be analytically valuable. In addition, it is suggested that its origins in…

Several theoretical views of automaticity are discussed. Most of these suggest that automaticity should be diagnosed by looking at the presence of features such as unintentional, uncontrolled/uncontrollable, goal independent, autonomous, purely stimulus driven, unconscious, efficient, and fast. Contemporary views further suggest that these…

This paper comments on the response offered by Trafimow on Lee and Wagenmakers comments on Trafimow's original article. It seems our comment should have made it clear that the objective Bayesian approach we advocate views probabilities neither as relative frequencies nor as belief states, but as degrees of plausibility assigned to propositions in…

Identity formation and self construction are inherently cultural phenomena. Although it may seem that human psychology--e.g., basic traits, tendencies, "characteristics," or even the definition of self--are universal and ahistorical, this essentialist view is quite erroneous and needs to be recognized and avoided. The task of studying one's…