Researchers studying science communication often examine how texts addressed to different audiences contribute to the formation of knowledge on a given issue. This article examines how arguments on scientific issues travel from text to text by considering how certain figures of speech persist from version to version. It uses a specialized genre of…

This article adapts a modification of Tamura's theoretical proposition and conducts a cross-country empirical investigation in an attempt to evaluate convergence on two different human capital proxies; namely enrollment rates and per capita researchers. The analysis considers three country groups at significantly different development levels:…

By conducting a survey of a cross-section of researchers at six major research libraries, the author sought to determine the usefulness of specific online resources to find primary sources, to ascertain researchers' awareness of these sources, and to uncover their discovery methodology. The survey results demonstrate that the majority of…

The fields of language testing and educational and psychological measurement have not, as yet, developed a set of principles and procedures for linking test scores and score-based inferences to test use and the consequences of test use. Although Messick (1989) discusses test use and consequences, his framework provides virtually no guidance on how…

This article discusses the nature of innovations in the educational community and how educational changes are made. Recent research documents ongoing change with new innovations coming and going with little or no concern for their efficacy or importance. The article describes some of the possible reasons why education goes through fairly continual…

In this article, we report on our qualitative study involving eight individuals hired to transcribe research tapes in university contexts. We consider issues of data analysis and data trustworthiness and the implications for both when transcription is assigned to someone other than the researcher. We explore the challenges transcribers faced…

The authors gave the following talk at the 2004 NCTE Annual Convention in Indianapolis upon receiving the Alan C. Purves Award, presented to the RTE article from the previous volume year judged most likely to have an impact on classroom practice ("The Road to Participation: The Construction of a Literacy Practice in a Learning Community of…

Officials of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards decided to post the report by veteran researcher William L. Sanders on the group's Web site after saying that they intended to stick with an "overview." The overview, which was largely critical of the study, appeared after the board was pressed to "publish something" by a…

Robinson interviews Juliet Popper Shaffer, a scientist, who graduated from Swarthmore College in 1953 and Stanford in 1957 with degrees in psychology and concentrations in math, philosophy, and statistics. In 2004 she received the second Florence Nightingale David award given biannually by the Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies to a…

Studies of autism typically adopt a factorial matched-groups design aimed at eliminating nonspecific factors such as mental retardation as explanations of performance on experimental tasks. This paper reviews the issues involved in designing such studies and interpreting their results and suggests that the best approach to matching may be to…

This paper explores new elementary teachers' instructional representations and how these are related to their science subject matter knowledge. One pair of prospective elementary teachers studied here exhibited a well-integrated, principled, and scientifically accurate understanding of the science they were teaching. The other pair exhibited less…

The phrases "best practice" and "evidence-based" are much in the air, and they imply that the answers are already out there. We just have to choose the right ones. Educational research in this connection is a kind of product testing. The U.S. Office of Education has made it a policy that rigorous product testing is the only…

In a recent paper, members from the London Feminist Salon Collective reflected on the vexed problem of agency in poststructuralist theory and asked, "as feminist educational researchers, where do we go from here?" The issue remains pressing as agency, both individual and collective, is at the heart of the feminist, and indeed, all radical…

This paper considers some of the decisions that researchers take and raises issues around researcher reflexivity, identity, values and ethics. It focuses attention on researchers and reflects on how the research they do, the topics they investigate, the methodologies they espouse, the methods they use and the writing/reporting styles they adopt,…

Researchers often have one or more theories or expectations with respect to the outcome of their empirical research. When researchers talk about the expected relations between variables if a certain theory is correct, their statements are often in terms of one or more parameters expected to be larger or smaller than one or more other parameters.…