This chapter is based on heuristic research and phenomenology which honors the dialectic of personal narratives as a way to process and understand the politics of change centered on hegemony, discourse, and cultural plurality. This methodology utilizes personal narrative and dialog as way to consider the importance of reflecting on individual…

Paralleling the accelerating pace of educational change in the last two decades has been the development of a professional learning community (PLC) in schools. Characterised by teacher collaboration and a spirit of enquiry, the PLC represents a response to change and an opportunity to benefit teachers, students and schools, using an approach most…

This study investigated the possible connection between effective laboratory activities and student performance on lecture exams. In a traditional undergraduate organic chemistry course for non-science majors, students could predict the products of organic reactions, but struggled to provide reaction mechanisms for those same reactions, despite…

To test whether epistemically unproblematic ways of thinking and talking about science could be transformed during preservice teacher training, we designed a system of learning activities based on a set of "heuristics for progressive disciplinary discourse" (HPDD). The HPDD outline six design principles of learning environments where the aim is to…

The purpose of this study is to explore how Lakatos' scientific research programmes might serve as a theoretical framework for representing and evaluating informal argumentation about socio-scientific issues. Seventy undergraduate science and non-science majors were asked to make written arguments about four socio-scientific issues. Our analysis…

Background: Two major conceptions of learning exist: reproducing new material and transforming material to make meaning. Teachers' understandings of what learning is probably influence their teaching practices and student academic performance. Aims: To validate a short scale derived from Tait, Entwistle, & McCune's (1998) ASSIST inventory and…

This highly readable text demystifies the qualitative research process--and helps readers conceptualize their own studies--by organizing the different research paradigms and traditions into coherent clusters. Real-world examples and firsthand perspectives illustrate the research process; instructive exercises and activities build on each other so…

The purpose of this qualitative, heuristic inquiry was two-fold: First, the study explored the lived experiences of four teacher leaders working in one comprehensive high school in a district where the researcher is superintendent. The second purpose was to learn from the experiences of the teacher leaders to inform district level actions that…

This paper suggests that multivariate analysis techniques are very important in educational research, and that one multivariate technique--canonical correlation analysis--may be particularly useful. The logic of canonical analysis is explained. It is suggested that a backward variable elimination strategy can make the method even more powerful, by…

All parametric methods are special cases of canonical correlation analysis and can, in fact, be performed using the canonical correlation procedures found in commonly available computer statistics packages such as the Statistical Analysis System (SAS) software. It is suggested that canonical analysis has advantages of versatility since it can…

This paper discusses some of the basic distinctions between the activities of inquiry and application and reviews the origins of the inquiry-application dichotomy. The parallel dependence model, designed to serve as a heuristic device, stresses the complementary potential of the inquiry and application functions. (LMO)

Prior to conducting a statistical analysis, sufficient data screening methods should be used for all research variables to identify miscoded, missing, or otherwise messy data. The primary purpose of these exercises was to demonstrate the role of data screening techniques and their potential to improve the performance of statistical methods. A…

This paper reviews issues involved in converting continuous variables to nominal variables to be used in the OVA techniques. The literature dealing with the dangers of dichotomizing continuous variables is reviewed. First, the assumptions invoked by OVA analyses are reviewed in addition to concerns regarding the loss of variance and a reduction in…

Developed by B. Efron (1979) and his colleagues (P. Diaconis and B. Efron, 1983), bootstrap methods have the goal of creating an empirical sampling distribution that can be used to test statistical hypotheses, estimate standard errors, and create confidence intervals. Bootstrapping methods offer a unique and effective method for testing the…

States M.L. Mares presents evidence that source confusions play a role in the cultivation effect. Clarifies some of Mares' findings that have implications for the heuristic model of cultivation effects and shows that Mares' findings are compatible with and can be integrated into the heuristic processing model. Discusses implications of Mares'…