The textbook is often a primary resource for teachers in elementary content areas, and it is often used to the exclusion of other resources. Research indicates that students may not have sufficient exposure to elements of nonfiction texts in order to be successful when encountering them in the content area. For many years, there has been little…

Even though the evidence-based movement and the concept of public good have been thoroughly discussed and from a range of perspectives in the literature, there is no general consensus on the definitions and nature of these terms and concepts. In this chapter, the author conceptualizes what is meant when educators speak of the concepts like…

Written from a health-care perspective, the focus of this chapter is to discuss the evolving role of digital storytelling, as a research method. The chapter explores how digital stories can be viewed as a qualitative response to the "big data" approaches to research which are critical in the information age. It will suggest ways in which…

Complexity in item response theory (IRT) has traditionally been quantified by simply counting the number of freely estimated parameters in the model. However, complexity is also contingent upon the functional form of the model. The information-theoretic principle of minimum description length provides a novel method of investigating complexity by…

Our research explores the experiences of participants in a program for graduate students interested in pursuing faculty careers in higher education (Students Pursuing Faculty Careers). The methodologies used to collect data for this case study included individual semistructured interviews, an asynchronous online focus group, a qualitative Levels…

This case study is based on research begun for an MA dissertation in Human Resource Management and subsequently developed. It follows the government's decision that from September 2012, UK universities would be able to increase their tuition fees from a maximum of £3000 to £9000 per year. The project aimed to investigate the impact of this on…

With increasing cross-sectoral relationships and partnerships and the blurring of the boundaries of the various service sectors, the membrane that is assumed to separate education and health in terms of young people's wellbeing looks thinner than ever. In this project we are concerned to know what teachers do in terms of young people's health, how…

This study aimed to identify administrators' views related to the assessment of school principals' reassignment in educational organizations. The study utilized qualitative research design and the study group composed of 8 school administrators selected via simple sampling who were employed in the Bolu central district in 2014-2015 academic year.…

Action research, conducted by teachers in their own classrooms, with the goal of improving practice, is an invaluable practice that can provide insight into students' lives. One of the many challenges associated with action research is knowing how to analyze and interpret data. In this manuscript, written as a "how to" of sorts, I…

This article analyzes 21 in-depth interviews of engineering and atmospheric science faculty at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) to determine faculty data management practices and needs within the context of their research activities. A detailed literature review of previous large-scale and institutional surveys and interviews…

Mathematical task design has been a central focus of the mathematics education research community over the last few years. In this study, six university teacher educators from six different US institutions formed a community of practice to explore key aspects of task design (planning, implementing, reflecting, and modifying) in the context of…

The demand for college graduates with skills in big data analysis is on the rise. Employers in all industry sectors have found significant value in analyzing both separate and combined data streams. However, news reports continue to script headlines drawing attention to data improprieties, privacy breaches and identity theft. While data privacy is…

Conducting social science research is a complex process, and social science students face a number of learning challenges in order to develop their skills. Moreover, new sources and types of data including so-called big data are providing new opportunities for research, but also pose methodological challenges. In this article, we explore a…

The Maryland State Department of Education (MSDE) is leading and supporting the implementation of a Teacher and Principal Evaluation (TPE) system in all school districts in the state. This study examines the progress of four years of TPE implementation, 2013 to 2016. The study draws on nearly 60,000 survey responses from principals and teachers…

Faced with increasing demands for accountability, teachers are having to base their instructional decisions and choice of interventions on data on student performance. This book shows how to make this otherwise daunting task much more manageable by means of case studies and countless evidence-based forms and graphs. Although this book often refers…