Background: There is increasing interest from review authors about including non-randomized studies (NRS) in their systematic reviews of health care interventions. This series from the Ottawa Non-Randomized Studies Workshop consists of six papers identifying methodological issues when doing this. Aim: To format the guidance from the preceding…

The focus of this article is on the role and contribution of policy research in contexts of social transformation. With reference to education transformation policies in post-apartheid South Africa, the argument is developed that research studies vary in their contribution to change, as a function of the paradigmatic assumptions and methodological…

This paper contributes to our understanding of a supposed free-market in research, where knowledge-transfer is to government, which then brokers the evidence into professional fields. Education research contracts are put out to tender by Scottish Government and a constellation of factors constructing this phenomenon has epistemological and…

The one constant for all dissertations, and for all research for that matter, is the need to state the problem of the study based on the scholarly literature. Doctoral programs commonly require that students take a sequence of research courses that usually focus on how to carry-out a study. That is, the design, the methodology, and the…

This article problematizes some of the ways that the issue of "context" has been treated in comparative education scholarship. We critique the cube approach recommended by Bray and Thomas (1995) as well as the common recirculations of Sadler's (1900) garden metaphor. Borrowing a set of analytic concepts from Bruno Latour (2004), we…

The authors contend that many cognitive abilities and affective processes important in creativity also occur in pretend play and that pretend play in childhood affects the development of creativity in adulthood. They discuss a variety of theories and observations that attempt to explain the importance of pretend play to creativity. They argue that…

This article examines Brantlinger and colleagues' longitudinal case study "Fighting for Darla; Challenges for family care and professional responsibility" [Brantlinger, E.A., S.M. Klein, and S.L. Guskin. 1994. "Fighting for Darla; Challenges for family care and professional responsibility." New York: Teachers College…

Multicultural and bilingual special education scholars have long advocated that research and practice situate (dis)ability in its social, cultural, racial/ethnic, linguistic, historical, legal, and political contexts. Still, the special education literature reflects more restricted conceptualizations of culture, language, and diversity than…

Goo and Mackey (this issue) outline several apparent design flaws in studies that have compared the impact of different types of corrective feedback (CF). Furthermore, they argue that SLA researchers should stop comparing recasts to other types of CF because they are inherently different kinds of phenomena. Our response to their article addresses…

To counteract what we see as a growing research-reporting concern, we propose the following editorial-policy change regarding the content of primary research articles in educational research journals: Contributors should restrict their discussion and conclusions to their data and not offer recommendations for educational practice nor speculate…

Background: speechBITE (http://www.speechbite.com) is an online database established in order to help speech and language therapists gain faster access to relevant research that can used in clinical decision-making. In addition to containing more than 3000 journal references, the database also provides methodological ratings on the PEDro-P (an…

Overlap-based measures are increasingly applied in the synthesis of single-subject research. This article considers two criticisms of overlap-based metrics, specifically that they do not measure magnitude of effect and do not adequately correspond with visual analysis. It is argued that these criticisms are based on fundamental misconceptions…

This introductory paper highlights the promising potential of learner corpora to facilitate investigations of the developmental processes underlying L2 learning. It offers a critical discussion of the aspects in which the disciplines of learner corpus (LC) research and SLA would benefit from closer interdisciplinary engagement and introduces the…

We greatly appreciate the astute comments on Lillard et al. (2013) and the opportunity to reply. Here we point out the importance of keeping conceptual distinctions clear regarding play, pretend play, and exploration. We also discuss methodological issues with play research. We end with speculation that if pretend play did not emerge because it…

Two previous studies examining 5 empirical educational psychology research journals (Hsieh et al., 2005; Robinson, Levin, Thomas, Pituch, & Vaughn, 2007) found that in the 21-year period from 1983 to 2004, there was a decrease in intervention and randomized experimental research, whereas in the 10-year period from 1994 to 2004, there was an…