Timothy San Pedro and Valerie Kinloch are among a powerful cohort of scholars who are pushing the ontological boundaries surrounding how we think about the conduct of educational research. A longstanding tension in the history of educational research has been conceptualizations of the goal of such work as discovering foundational principles about…

From the time of Likert (1932) on, attitudes of expediency regarding both theory and methodology became apparent with reference to survey construction and validation practices. In place of theory and more--theoretically minded methods, such as those found in the early work of Thurstone (1928) and Coombs (1964), statistical models and…

Cognitive interviewing (CI) is a method to identify sources of confusion in assessment items and to assess validity evidence on the basis of content and response processes. We introduce readers to CI and describe a process for conducting such interviews and analyzing the results. Recommendations for best practice are provided.

The field of educational research encompasses a vast array of paradigmatic and methodological perspectives. Arguably, this range has both expanded and limited our achievements in the name of educational research. In Australia, the ascendancy of certain research perspectives has profoundly shaped the field and its likely future. We (are expected…

Analytics derived from the student learning environment provide new insights into the collegiate experience; they can be used as a supplement to or, to some extent, in place of traditional surveys. To serve this purpose, however, greater attention must be paid to conceptual frameworks and to advancing institutional systems, activating new…

Walking simultaneously in two worlds as an Indigenous researcher, navigating Indigenous and Western epistemologies/methodologies can have its challenges. Indigenous methodologies have become an important element of qualitative research and have been increasingly taken up by both Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers. Indigenous methodologies…

The What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) uses the term "baseline equivalence" when determining if the intervention group (those that received the intervention of interest) and the comparison group (those that did not receive the intervention) had characteristics that were similar enough ("equivalent") at the start of the study (at…

The What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) examines manuscripts (that is, journal articles, working papers, dissertations, or other publications or pieces of written research presented as complete sets of findings) to determine if they are eligible to be included in a specific review effort. The WWC first determines whether the manuscript contains a…

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…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to address participants' humorous provocations as a part of informal interactions between participants and researcher that can be treated just like the research data. By means of autoethnographic analysis, the author explores the expectations of the researcher and participants that humour research entails and…

In 2012, I completed my doctoral study which was positioned in a hermeneutic phenomenological theoretical framework within the interpretive social science mode of inquiry. Through the phenomenological component, I attempted to understand the experiences of secondary school immigrant students in their mathematics classrooms as the phenomena, while…

This case study formed the basis of the dissertation component of my Doctor in Education which I completed in 2016. The study was based on the insights of 15 career change teachers during their initial teacher preparation program and explored aspects of their transitions from their previous careers into teaching. The main research instrument…

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…

The purpose of this case study is to demonstrate the power of a longitudinal ethnographic approach to the study of urban education within the context of US educational reform. This case study begins with an introduction to the larger research study, its design, methods of data collection, and process for data analysis and follows with an…

Systematic reviews are still a controversial topic in some quarters, with the arguments for and against their use being well-rehearsed. In an attempt to advance a more nuanced approach to thinking about systematic reviewing, this paper illustrates the wide range of theoretical perspectives, methodologies and purposes that underpin the vast range…