The goal of this study is to explore new tools for analyzing scientific sense-making in out-of-school settings. Although such measures are now common in science classroom research, dialogically based methodological approaches are relatively new to informal learning research. Such out-of-classroom settings have more recently become a breeding…

Qualitative researchers often describe the ambiguities and complexities of extracting meaning from ambiguous and complex data. Although methodological literature provides useful frameworks and heuristics to guide the process of transforming field data into credible findings, learning to analyze and interpret qualitative data also involves a…

Most investigations into the effects of funding changes on higher education systems have been carried out in developed economies. This article focuses on the Thai higher education system, applying theoretical arguments and empirical analyses to the case of a newly industrialising country. One goal of the Thai higher education funding reform is to…

Background: Research on Sport Education (SE) has shown the curriculum model to be effective in motivating students to undertake specific role responsibilities and engage in the student-led tasks of the curriculum. Despite this level of engagement, emerging evidence suggests that student leadership within the peer teaching tasks of the curriculum…

During the 2006 Spring semester, student affairs administrators at West Virginia University called on all student affairs units to develop assessment plans that focused on student learning. Student affairs units were required to begin their assessment plans by selecting at least one learning outcome to measure. The Assessment Council, ten…

While peer review is a common practice in college composition courses, there is little consistency in approach and effectiveness within the field, owing in part to the dearth of empirical research that investigates peer-review processes. This study is designed to shed light on what a peer reviewer actually reads and attends to while providing…

Teacher leaders assume a wide range of roles to support school and student success. Harrison and Killion describe 10 roles that teacher leaders can fulfill in their schools. As resource providers, they provide materials to help their colleagues. Instructional specialists help colleagues with instructional strategies, and curriculum specialists…

The 10th International Conference on Educational Data Mining (EDM 2017) is held under the auspices of the International Educational Data Mining Society at the Optics Velley Kingdom Plaza Hotel, Wuhan, Hubei Province, in China. This years conference features two invited talks by: Dr. Jie Tang, Associate Professor with the Department of Computer…

To compare college and university student engagement in two countries with different responses to global forces, Canada and the United States (US), a series of hierarchical linear regression (HLM) models were developed to analyse data from the 2006 administration of the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE). Overall, students in the U.S.…

The National Comprehensive Center for Teacher Quality (TQ Center) designed the Interactive Data Tools to provide users with access to state and national data that can be helpful in assessing the qualifications of teachers in the states and the extent to which a state's teacher policy climate generally supports teacher quality. The Interactive Data…

Using Mississippi and North Carolina as cases, the author examines progress made toward the desegregation of enrollments in public colleges and universities. Enrollment trends are analyzed in the context of contemporary social, legal, and educational policy initiatives intended to desegregate dual systems of public higher education. Despite more…

To what extent are the discourse behaviors of examiners salient to participants of an oral performance test? This exploratory study employs a grounded ethnographic approach to investigate the perceptions of the verbal, paralinguistic and nonverbal discourse behaviors of an examiner in a one-on-one role-play task that is one of four tasks in an…

Researchers who use video to record interactions usually need to translate the video data into another medium at some stage in order to facilitate its analysis and dissemination. This article considers some methodological issues that arise in this process by examining transcripts, diagrams and pictures as examples of different techniques for…

Context: Drawing from Ingersoll's (2001) study of teacher attrition, Huberman's (1989) study of the professional life cycle of teachers, and recent retention/attrition literature across the professions, this study seeks to make sense of the complexities of contemporary teachers' careers in light of changes in social and economic forces, the…

Constructing model hot air balloons is an activity that captures the imaginations of students, enabling teachers to present required content to minds that are open to receive it. Additionally, there are few activities that lend themselves to integrating so much content across subject areas. In this article, the authors describe how they have…