The article argues that science assessment should change from an item-driven to a construct-driven practice and pay more attention to disciplinary scientific reasoning. It investigates assessment scales developed from a novel theoretical rationale, describing scientific reasoning as three fundamental practices (hypothesizing, experimenting, and…

In a recent themed issue of "Journal of Teacher Education" ("JTE" 63.4) about issues of disability, diversity, and teacher education, guest editors Marleen Pugach, Linda Blanton, and Lani Florian (2012) invite readers to participate in "honest, difficult, and much needed dialogue across the many diversity constituencies in teacher education" (p.…

Research has described the key role of formulaic language use in both written and spoken communication (Schmitt, 2004; Wray, 2002), as well as in relation to L2 learning (Ellis, Simpson--Vlach, & Maynard, 2008). Relatively few studies have examined related fixed and semi-fixed multi-word units (MWUs), which comprise fixed parts with the potential…

Scholarship on teaching undergraduates increasingly emphasizes the benefits of providing students with an active role in their education whereby instructors are more aptly described as facilitators of knowledge rather than merely providers of it. Additionally, recommendations from the American Sociological Association aimed specifically at the…

Although social justice is a core value of social work, it can be more difficult to integrate into a research methods class. This article describes an assignment developed for a BSW one-semester research class that served the dual purpose of educating students about social justice as well as qualitative research. Students were instructed to…

This article revisits the 1986 Feldhusen, Proctor, and Black recommendations on grade skipping. These recommendations originally appeared as 12 guidelines. In this article, the guidelines are grouped into three general categories: how to screen accelerant candidates, how to engage with the adults in the acceleration process (e.g., teachers,…

Research on the topic of cell phones has proliferated over the past decade. Based on a review of the literature, it appears that the majority of the extant research on the topic resides in the technology, education, and social sciences fields. Recent reviews indicate that the scope of the research on cell/mobile phones is eclectic in nature…

Big data sets and powerful computing capacity have transformed scholarly inquiry across many disciplines. While the impact of data-intensive research methodologies is perhaps most distinct in the natural and social sciences, the humanities have also benefited from these new analytical tools. While full-text data is necessary to study topics such…

Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is a decision-making process that often involves public participation in the scoping and reviewing stage. Although the importance of engaging the public in the EIA process has long been recognized, it is often considered ineffective due to factors such as time, budget, resource, technical and procedural…

We need methods to measure friendship among very young children to study the beginnings of friendship and the impact of experiences with friendship for later development. This article presents an overview of methods for measuring very young children's friendships. A behavioural sociometric method was constructed to study degrees of friendship…

This article is an invited commentary and analysis of the authors' completed systematic evaluation of Child Protective Services (CPS) differential response (DR) models. I write this commentary based on 25 years of public child welfare experience followed by 13 years as a social work professor and researcher. In their review of DR, the…

Over the past several decades a growing amount of research has considered the role, challenges, and complexities of teaching reflective inquiry to preservice teachers. Generally accepted as a valuable component of a teacher education program, there are persistent levels of ambiguity regarding how reflective inquiry can be intentionally fostered…

This report offers an interdisciplinary approach for conducting assessment on learning outcomes in undergraduate communication research skills where information literacy is embedded in the expected outcome. A Communication Studies department and the University Library piloted a two-year program to develop strategies for coordinated assessment that…

The specifics of how research competencies should be taught in social work curricula vary. This study explored requirements for student research projects and program director attitudes toward research education using the responses from 201 BSW and MSW programs to a 48-item survey. A majority of the respondents' programs require students to…

Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) is a widely used but poorly understood statistical procedure. This paper described EFA and its methodological variations. Then, key methodological variations were used to evaluate EFA usage over a 10-year period in five leading developmental disabilities journals. Sixty-six studies were located and evaluated on…