Botswana has nearly attained universal primary school attendance, but the additional quantitative intake has weakened the original qualitative base. Employing data collected by the National Commission on Education in Botswana, this study looked for ways to derive benchmark measures of the effects of school quality on learning. One method uses a…

A study explored the use of an interactive analysis system, the Reciprocal Category System (RCS), for recording and analyzing observations of individuals tutoring in reading. The supervision of teaching requires observation, and the RCS can provide detailed, objective, and quantifiable records of behavior categories that occur in teacher-learner…

This study was originally designed to investigate the effectiveness of using specially adapted, existing programs from the NOVA Television series for helping older citizens to understand the scientific issues that underlie public policy; in particular, to promote understanding of the interdependence of technology development and basic science…

The problems of classroom teacher-conducted research are examined with reference to a particular case study. The case study involved a field test of "A Practical Guide for Advanced Writers in ESL" over a semester in two sections of an intermediate English as a second language (ESL) writing class for college-bound students at the University of…

This article presents one portrayal of the role of photography as a language of teacher inquiry. To inform teachers' use of photography, the first part of the article presents a brief historical perspective of photography's role in the study of human behavior in the fields of visual anthropology, visual sociology, photojournalism, and media…

In this investigation, methodological and substantive issues regarding early mastery motivation (also termed competence motivation and effectance motivation) were examined longitudinally using a primarily middle-class sample of 37 children observed at 1 and 3.5 years of age. Data on cognitive competence and mastery motivation were collected in…

Logit analysis coupled with the BMDP4F computer program (Brown, 1983) was used to derive an appropriate model for the study of student retention and graduation. The model was then applied to graduate student retention and graduation data from the University of Maryland, College Park (UMCP). Logit analysis is a method of determining what effects…

A method for college planning using alternative futures scenarios is explained, and a case study is used to illustrate its use in institutional research. The alternative futures approach addresses the uncertainty associated with strategic decision making. It differs from the traditional long-range planning models based on a single set of…

This paper contributes to the knowledge about the effects that magnet schools have on improving educational quality. The history of magnet schools in American education is examined, linking it with several recent movements to reform and reorganize schooling. A synthesis of research findings from 12 district studies of magnet schools and various…

This book is intended to give animal scientists elementary tools to perform on-farm livestock analysis and to provide crop-oriented farming systems researchers with methods for conducting animal research. Chapter 1 describes farming systems research as a systems approach to on-farm animal research. Chapter 2 outlines some important…

Preliminary findings of this research effort provide support for the hypothesis that existing databases maintained by federal agencies for administrative or monitoring purposes can serve as useful data sources in special education policy research. The research explored the relationships among a number of state-level special education, fiscal, and…

Very little is known about how companies make decisions about budgets for training. Previous research on employee training has focused on the impact of training on an individual's success in the labor market. Economists have also studied why employers are more likely to train certain persons than others. This study, on the other hand, uses a…

Language interference (which was originally posited in ESL theory) involves ways in which language learners draw upon previous language experiences to fill holes in their knowledge of a second language they are learning. Since the 1970s, language interference has been a part of the pedagogy of basic writing, concerning itself with ways that basic…

This paper proposes examining cooperative learning from an anthropological perspective and presents a theoretical framework for doing so. The paper first briefly reviews the psychological theory and research underlying cooperative learning. The paper uses data from a pilot ethnographic study of cooperative learning in a fourth-grade classroom to…

The importance of theory in qualitative work is discussed through an examination of the search for theory that arose in relation to a case study of educational change in an American school district. Theory is defined as an analytical, interpretive framework to help the researcher make sense of what is going on in the social setting. Certain…