The author has been teaching qualitative research in education at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem for some years now. He has a sense that dealing with the issues of research methodology is of importance if researchers do indeed consider anthropology and qualitative methods to have something to contribute to improve the world in which they live.…

Jewish education needs a philosophy if its practitioners are to be considered part of a "real" profession and its professors are to be thought of as having mastered a legitimate academic discipline. A strong cadre of researchers who have produced a valid and reliable body of research also is required to earn a respected place in the academy. Until…

The effectiveness of researchers in infancy is conditioned by their participation in 3 agendas. The academic agenda is devoted to the question of understanding infants, the social agenda is devoted to the question of how to improve the life of infants, and the political agenda is devoted to finding the resources for both understanding and…

Two matters of deep concern in the Feuer, Towne, and Shavelson article are the focus of this commentary. First, the authors agree that legislative mandates reifying particular methodological approaches would be ill informed and misdirected. Rather, what is legislatively appropriate is a mandate for rigorous peer review of federally funded work…

This article draws on an action research project in primary and secondary schools which was funded through the Campaign for Learning, and supported by Newcastle University with a focus on "Learning to Learn". This is a potentially useful concept for teachers and academics as attempts are made to move beyond curriculum-driven and…

Is the idea of the liberal university dead, has the postmodern university any chance of being emancipatory, has the theory-practice divide merely collapsed in an era of "new knowledge work", or has the university just become one aspect of market states and global capitalism? Knowledge-based economies locate universities as central to the…

This paper is concerned with the importance of testing and developing integrated multilevel educational effectiveness models through comparative studies in educational effectiveness. It is argued that secondary analyses of international comparative studies could help researchers test and develop integrated multilevel educational effectiveness…

In this article we explore our experiences of researching children and families in the home setting. We trace the impact of the home setting on some ethical and methodological issues which arose in the course of conducting our field work and consider issues of consent, confidentiality, power, leaving the field and specifically our dilemmas, both…

Teachers are likely to create authentic learning environments for their students only if such contexts exist for them. However, it is more important than ever to look closely at professional development spaces that have been sustained over time in order to bolster teachers' agency, giving them the courage to teach against the grain. In this…

Narrative inquiry is a qualitative research approach that brings rigor and depth to the understanding of human experiences. It is important that the researcher become enmeshed in the school context in order to develop a heightened sense of the world view of participants. Critical to beginning a narrative inquiry are negotiating relationships and…

Transformation of education into an evidence-based field is a task that will require involvement of federal and state policymakers, local education leaders, administrators, teachers, and parents. Over the past 6 years, a new direction has been set for education research. This report presents the National Board for Education Sciences' evaluation of…

This paper is the result of collaboration among early childhood education researchers from different cultures on opposite sides of the globe. The project sought to identify what practitioners in both preschool and primary school settings in Iceland and Australia regarded as successful transition to school practices. Independently developed surveys…

This book explores the wide range of contexts in which research into creating connections in learning and teaching may take place. Creating connections can encompass making links, crossing divides, forming relationships, building frameworks, and generating new knowledge. The cognitive, cultural, social, emotional and/or physical aspects of…

This article uses a comic program to graphically summarize a collaborative action research project that brings together York University researchers and elementary school teachers at Joyce Public School in northwest Toronto to experimentally develop multiliteracies pedagogies in a context of emergent literacy education. The project, which has been…

Due to new standards in fostering life-long learning at school, research has increasingly dealt with the promotion of self-regulated learning, resulting in a large number of intervention studies conducted at primary and secondary school. The current study aimed at investigating the impact of various training characteristics on the training…