I propose a theory of conceptual development in which concept possession consists in seeing the world aright. The capacity to see things aright is primitive; it is not explained in terms of grasp of a theory or in terms of assimilation of socially determined norms of word use. The educational task in promoting conceptual development is to train…

The author reports on homeless people in London who have conducted the largest ever research study of the barriers to employment and employability faced by the homeless. A group of eight "peer researchers"--all with a background of homelessness, all current volunteers at Groundswell UK, an organisation which promotes self-help…

Interim semester field trips provide a unique opportunity for undergraduate students to collect field data in support of their capstone research experience. We encourage students to participate in collaborative research projects prior to the semester for which they enroll in the capstone course. Students select a research project based on a field…

Modern industrial society liberated the sources of livelihood, gave birth to salaried labour and began to cater for social mobility, i.e. broke the foundations of traditional estate society. Traditional trades and socialization mechanisms attached to families were replaced by mass production and education. Education played a crucial role in the…

The ethical considerations that university students have to be concerned about when undertaking research projects are a matter for a range of publications and committees. This article considers the terms of reference of ethical considerations in students' research projects, given the number of researchers who are now doing research within their…

While working on the development of literacy in Portugal and comparing it with other European societies in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, I not only saw how late Portugal had been in achieving this process, but also how inaccurate the available numbers about it were. I decided that as part of securing a better understanding of the…

EdSource hosted an unprecedented forum on October 19, 2007 in Sacramento, California for the presentation and sharing of research-based education policy options offered by a range of K-12 organization and opinion leaders in California with diverse perspectives. Invitees included highly respected state policymakers, education leaders, researchers,…

As university professors we sought to disrupt the practice of giving our students the actions we felt they should imitate in their teaching practice. Instead, we sought to actively engage teachers in the creation of workable solutions to real-life problems. We accomplished this by conducting a participatory action research project. This paper…

Although a number of studies have investigated the attitudes of published academic authors with respect to open access (OA) publishing and institutional repositories (IRs), none have considered the views of other institutional stakeholders. Research students, in particular, are a group that could make a major contribution to an IR, both currently…

This paper will present a review of design-based research conducted over the past 10 years that has modeled and promoted students' reasoning, conceptual change and argumentative dialogue processes and practices through designing a number of digital dialogue games. This line of work was inspired by some challenges and insights that emerged during…

This study used semistructured interviews and grounded theory to look for characteristics among college undergraduates that predicted persistence into Ph.D. and M.D./Ph.D. training. Participants in the summer undergraduate and postbaccalaureate research programs at the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine were interviewed at the start, near the end,…

This article focuses on an investigation into the learning journeys undertaken by managers of a community education project in an area of urban deprivation. A constructivist interpretation of life history narrative revealed the positive effects of community workers' heavy dependence on experiential work-based learning, which resulted in the…

Physics labwork has for a long time now been an important part of academic physics education. But demands on physics education have changed. However, while seminars and lectures have easily been updated with the latest content, it is much more difficult to modernize labwork courses: mere changes of content require expensive new equipment, tight…

In order to address a perceived gap between academic knowledge and education, The Dutch National Advisory Board on Education has suggested that there is a need for more communication between research and practice. For me the gap is more than simply a matter of lack of communication, than a result of the model of Research, Development and Diffusion…

Although the "Mixed" primary and secondary school population is rapidly growing in both size and recognition, pupils from mixed racial and ethnic backgrounds are largely invisible in current educational policies and practices regarding minority ethnic pupils. In light of initial Local Education Authority-level data which suggested that…