Social workers in academic and agency settings have the opportunity to do funded research using the National Institutes of Health (NIH) R03 small grant mechanism designed for discrete, clearly defined projects that can be completed within a 1- to 2-year time period with limited funding. This article describes the R03 mechanism and provides a guide…

Victor Vroom provides a revealing and insightful account of a lifetime search for integrating his dual identities as researcher and teacher. He takes us through his early transitions from teaching in the psychology department at the University of Pennsylvania through his ten-year career at Carnegie to his current role at Yale School of Management.…

The use of manipulatives in the classroom has been advocated for decades. However, the theoretical and empirical support for this practice is mixed. Some researchers suggest that manipulatives facilitate learning by (a) providing an additional channel for conveying information, (b) activating real-world knowledge, and/or (c) improving memory…

Qualitative researchers often describe the ambiguities and complexities of extracting meaning from ambiguous and complex data. Although methodological literature provides useful frameworks and heuristics to guide the process of transforming field data into credible findings, learning to analyze and interpret qualitative data also involves a…

Between 1980 and 1993, only 19% of medical school graduates chose faculty appointments with research responsibilities. Women and minorities represent only a small fraction of these, despite their growing numbers. The authors' goal is to study the effects of human agency, particularly self-efficacy, on the career development of physician…

This study documents one teacher candidate's conceptions about the inclusion of children with special needs in the general education classroom and how these conceptions changed over time. The study illustrates which experiences contributed to an individual's evolving understandings and changing attitudes towards inclusion. Throughout a 15-week…

Researchers reviewed 20 articles on peer tutoring research in secondary settings and addressed demographics of tutors and tutees, content areas in which peer tutors were employed, tutor training required for implementing effective tutoring programs, and the effects of peer tutoring on tutee performance. Generally, peer tutoring in secondary…

"Where is God now?" is a question from the Holocaust memoir "Night" by Elie Wiesel and an underlying narrative dilemma for the teachers and most student participants in this qualitative study of three Holocaust units in secondary English classrooms in the Midwestern United States. Using a narrative theory framework, this study explores how…

To improve the quality in teaching and learning, opportunities need to be provided where practitioners and researchers meet and share visions, disseminate findings, co-construct ideas, and set research agendas together. Visiting a conference is one well-known and established way to do this. But are they effective? A survey was conducted among the…

Educators, practitioners, and policy makers have long debated the impact of the results of evaluation studies on educational practice. If evaluation is to influence practice, the communication gap between researchers and decision makers must be reduced or eliminated. In order to close this gap, evaluators must become educators, working with a…

Qualitative research has increased in popularity among social scientists. While substantial attention has been given to various methods of qualitative analysis, there is a need to focus on strategies for collecting diverse forms of qualitative data. In this article, the authors discuss four sources of qualitative data: participant observation,…

Recognizing the importance teachers' own voices play in their own professional development, the case study reported in this paper aims to illuminate the role that formal instruction and immersion in research can play in shaping teachers' views of "teacher-research" and of themselves as future enquiring practitioners. The study was conducted with a…

Library patrons familiar with Web searching conventions often find library searching to be less familiar and even intimidating. This article describes and evaluates a series of usability research studies employing two different and popular methodologies: user-centered redesign and usability testing. Card sorting and affinity mapping were used to…

To what extent are the discourse behaviors of examiners salient to participants of an oral performance test? This exploratory study employs a grounded ethnographic approach to investigate the perceptions of the verbal, paralinguistic and nonverbal discourse behaviors of an examiner in a one-on-one role-play task that is one of four tasks in an…

This paper problematizes the discourse of internationalizing the curriculum using a critical framework of difference. The author draws on her transnational experiences as an international postgraduate researcher in an Australian university, an educator in Malaysia and her present experiences as an academic in an Australian university. The notions…