Family-school partnerships are increasingly touted as a means of improving both student and school improvement. This recognition has led to an increase in policies and initiatives that offer the following benefits: improved communication between parents and educators; home and school goals that are mutually supportive and shared; better…

Training health professionals within university environments has traditionally focused on face-to-face methods. Practitioners working within the UK National Health Service (NHS) have found it difficult to gain leave from work to attend for study due to the demands of the NHS and staff shortages. In response, the authors developed a distance…

School finance adequacy litigation has become a widely-used means in the efforts to improve educational outcomes for children. This form of litigation has been attempted in nearly every state over the past two decades. Despite its prevalence, its effectiveness remains questionable due to a lack of study relating finance litigation to student…

The "District of Columbia School Choice Incentive Act of 2003," passed by the Congress in January 2004, established the first federally funded, private school voucher program in the United States. The purpose of the new scholarship program was to provide low-income residents, particularly those whose children attend schools in need of…

In an effort to determine differences between students who respond to surveys and those who do not, New Mexico State University at Alamogordo (NMSU-A) undertook a study of students in fall 1992. Students were asked to complete an 18-item questionnaire while waiting in lines during registration. The 1,618 out of 2,114 (76.5%) students who completed…

This guide discusses the use of focus groups in marketing research for higher education. It describes the differences between qualitative and quantitative research, and examines when it is appropriate to use focus group research, when it is not, and why. The guide describes a step-by-step approach in how to plan, formulate, moderate, and report…

This study was designed to determine the extent to which the results of an employment survey of graduates of a teacher preparation program would have been affected by changes in response rate. At the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, a followup of teacher education program graduates is conducted annually. A total of 284 graduates of the 1992…

This collaborative study centered around the development and implementation of an integrative module for science and language arts methods courses in a teacher education program. The study was conducted within an action research framework and was informed by perspectives on collaborative inquiry and the two instructors' personal practical…

The international area has grown as a field of graduate research in the past 20 years. Graduate students in adult education need to become more involved in international research both to stay viable as scholars and to be able to effect positive change in the lives of people in developing countries. The four main priorities in research in adult…

The field work for this study was conducted in South Africa in 1987-1989, before the end of apartheid, but much of the critical reflection and engagement postdates the empirical research. The project examined the role of the facilitator in the process of educational change. The research involved 34 teachers from primary schools. Chapter one…

The National Household Education Survey (NHES) is a data collection system of the National Center for Education Statistics which has as its mission the collection and publication of data on the condition of education in the United States. The NHES provides descriptive data through a random digit dialed telephone survey of the noninstitutionalized…

The knowledge gap hypothesis predicts that infusions of information into an environment will lead to stronger relationships between education and knowledge for higher socioeconomic (SES) segments of the population, and ultimately, a relative gap between higher and lower SES groups. The hypothesis usually focuses on mass media but is also relevant…

This manual was developed to assist school jurisdiction personnel in implementing effective customer satisfaction surveys by telephone or through mailed surveys to be completed by the customer. It provides background information about market research field activities and processes and gives an overview of the entire data collection process,…

This paper takes the position that philosophy is a critical avenue with which to approach a study of schooling, and that study of philosophy and philosophy of education will provide a framework needed for inquiry into schooling that is foundational, diverse, and critical. Processes of philosophical inquiry include the following: (1) conceptual…

The National Education Longitudinal Studies Program (NELS) is a long-term effort that encompasses the educational experience of youth from three decades. This report is based on the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS:88), a component of the NELS series that began as a national probability sample of eighth grade schools and…