This paper discusses investigations in science education addressing the nonlinear dynamical hypothesis. Learning science is a suitable field for applying interdisciplinary research and predominately for testing psychological theories. It was demonstrated that in this area the paradigm of complexity and nonlinear dynamics have offered theoretical…

For decades, instructional communication scholars have relied predominantly on cross-sectional survey methods to generate empirical associations between effective teaching and student learning. These studies typically correlate students' perceptions of their instructor's teaching behaviors with subjective self-report assessments of their own…

Although peer nomination measures have been used by researchers for nearly a century, common methodological practices and rules of thumb (e.g., which variables to measure; use of limited vs. unlimited nomination methods) have continued to develop in recent decades. At the same time, other key aspects of the basic nomination procedure (e.g.,…

Although conducting psychological research within schools has always required effort, persistence, and the careful navigation of various interests, there is a consensus among child and adolescent researchers that, over the past 2 decades, it has become increasingly difficult to collect data within schools. In this chapter, we lay out common and…

In this dialogic article of interwoven stories, we employ a critical autoethnographic approach to explore moments of our lives as we worked through the official "research plan" at the heart of the supervision timeline. Lucinda's doctoral thesis in education, supervised by Jo, highlights the way curriculum emerges from the struggles of…

The concept of research paradigm is one that many higher degree research students, and even early career researchers, find elusive to articulate, and challenging to apply in their research proposals. Adopting an ethnographic and hermeneutic methodology, the present paper draws upon our experiences as lecturers in Research Methods over many years,…

Increased emphasis is being placed on integrating research and teaching in higher education because of the numerous benefits accrued by students. In accordance, research methods courses are ubiquitously contained in curricula, ostensibly to promote research training and the research-teaching nexus. Students may not appreciate the inclusion,…

This article analyzes recent cases of company-sponsored online experiments with unsuspecting users and discusses the ethical aspects of such experimentation. These cases illustrate a new type of online research where companies modify their algorithms to intentionally misinform or mislead users. Unlike typical forms of A/B testing, where two…

Theory and research on values, ethics and moral decision making in educational leadership has called for ontological and epistemological changes in research and theory building that focus less on perspectives pertaining to logical positivism (naïve realism) and more toward paradigms that are naturalistic, post-positivistic, transactional and…

"Attrition" is the loss of sample during the course of a study. It occurs when individuals initially randomly assigned in a study are not included when researchers examine the outcome of interest. Attrition is a common issue in education research, and it occurs for many reasons. The What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) is an initiative of the…

In this paper the authors share their insights on whether it is necessary to articulate a research methodology when reporting on theoretical research. Initially the authors, one being a supervisor and the other, a PhD student and a colleague, were confronted with the question during supervision and writing of a thesis on theoretical research.…

This case study draws on my quantitative study of college entrance exam preparation (also known as "test prep") to illustrate how a researcher goes about setting up a quantitative project using existing datasets. I describe how I decided between two different datasets, a decision which required attention to how the research question was…

In 2014, I enrolled in a doctoral program within the discipline of Public Health with the aspiration of conducting research on young children's wellbeing as they transition to school. In undertaking a systematic review of the literature on young children's health and wellbeing, it was evident that current conceptualizations of child wellbeing were…

This report considers the use of a focus group as a data collection tool in early childhood research. The report outlines one researcher's experience, analyzing the difficulties of gaining meaningful data during focused group discussions, considering in some depth the impacts of careful management on the validity of the findings, providing…

This case study provides an overview of a conversation analysis study that examines how the management of talk is accomplished by a chairperson in a teachers' meeting. The case describes each of the various steps of the conversation analysis study from deciding on an initial research focus to collecting, transcribing, and analyzing the data. It…