Fueled by a culture fascinated by numbers and increased accountability, data-driven instruction has become a mighty force as it joins with the tools of technology to handle the mammoth task of gathering, sorting, analyzing, and synthesizing data. Success stories from districts all over the country attest to the positive results of implementing…

This article aims at analyzing laddering as a technique of qualitative research, emphasizing the procedures for data collection, analysis and interpretation, and its main limitations as well. "Laddering refers to an in-depth, one-on-one interviewing technique used to develop an understanding of how consumers translate the attributes of products…

Past estimates of the effect of family income on child development have often been plagued by endogeneity and measurement error. In this paper, we use two simulated instrumental variables strategies to estimate the causal effect of income on children's math and reading achievement. Our identification derives from the large, non-linear changes…

Each fall semester, on the first day of class of his upper-level American Military History course, the author informs his students that a major part of the class consists of a wargame in which they will participate. In this article, the author describes briefly how the class will be divided into two teams, and that on a specific evening during the…

In this paper, we examine how students discuss and interpret data and whether these actions vary depending on the type of data they analyse. More specifically, we are interested in whether students perform differently when analysing first-hand data, which they collect themselves, compared with second-hand data provided to them. Our data analysis…

District central office administrators increasingly face policy demands to use "evidence" in their decision making. These demands up the ante on education policy researchers and policy makers to better understand what evidence use in district central offices entails and the conditions that may support it. To that end, the authors conducted a…

Proposes hermeneutical inquiry as suitable to the study of several aspects of career counseling, including career as a life-span project. Addresses three specific steps of hermeneutical inquiry: the recognition of the researcher's initial framework, the identification of the actor's framework, and the construction of the interpretation. Argues…

Discusses problems researchers face when they want to describe relationship between several predictors and criterion variable. Considers ways of addressing problem of contribution of each predictor depending on which other predictors are in regression equation. Focuses on parallel information for each variable, examining initial and final…

This article discusses and illustrates the three ways by which information from a multiple response questionnaire can be analyzed, its impact on the resulting summary tables, and the implications for the interpretation of survey results. It also underscores the importance of communicating with a data analyst during the questionnaire design phase.…

Applies Latour's notion of graphism to the hierarchy of sciences. Finds that the use of graphs across seven scientific disciplines correlates almost perfectly with their hardness, and that the same pattern held up across 10 specialty fields in psychology. (Author/CCM)

This paper considers the recent introduction of Citizenship Education in England from a governmental perspective, drawing on the later work of Foucault to offer a detailed account of the political rationalities, technologies and subjectivities implicated in contemporary education policy in the formation and governance of citizen-subjects. This is…

A typical card sort is an activity in which students are given a set of cards with a single concept written on each card and asked to organize the cards by grouping related concepts. The nontraditional card sorts described in this article foster critical thinking and add elements of inquiry as students use them to develop flowcharts for complex…

In many practical settings, essentially the same differential item functioning (DIF) procedures have been in use since the late 1980s. Since then, examinee populations have become more heterogeneous, and tests have included more polytomously scored items. This paper summarizes and classifies new DIF methods and procedures that have appeared since…

States in the U.S. are required to provide transition services to young people in special education to increase the likelihood of positive post-school outcomes (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 1990, IDEA, amended 1997). Fourteen years later the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004 strengthened transition…

Multiple regression and correlation (MRC) methods form a flexible family of statistical techniques that can address a wide variety of different types of research questions of interest to rehabilitation professionals. In this article, we review basic concepts and terms, with an emphasis on interpretation of findings relevant to research questions…