This paper discusses a formal study conducted in 2001 at Brigham Young University to determine the value of the library to the university community. Methods used to collect data for the study included an e-mail survey, usage statistics, naturalistic observations, and interviews. Two years after the study, the authors wondered if the conclusions of…

Researchers in the fields of cognitive and language development have made less use of large-scale longitudinal designs and of person-centered approaches to data analysis than have researchers in the fields of social and personality development. It is argued that differences among domains of developmental psychology in the research methods employed…

Institutions of higher education want to diversify their learning climates, and many offer courses in multiculturalism, yet these courses still do not meet the needs of attitudinal change. A new instrument was developed, the Munroe Multicultural Attitude Scale Questionnaire (MASQUE), that was theoretically based in Banks's transformative approach,…

The Air and Space Basic Course (ASBC) solicits feedback from field commanders and supervisors; however, it does not currently use any type of graduate or supervisor evaluation system. The ASBC has no mechanism in place to guarantee feedback about how the course has or has not prepared its graduates to function as military leaders. Consequently,…

The purpose of this study was to characterise the development of a preservice physical education teacher's professional activity over the course of training interactions with her co-operating teacher. The student teacher's professional development was studied using a hermeneutic and inductive approach based on the analysis of data from observation…

The aim of this paper is to develop an approach that can be used in addressing the issue of the use of information technology and its importance in human meaning making. By using a combination of Wittgenstein's work method, a sociocultural perspective on learning, and a sociotechnical perspective on artifacts a specific focus for analyses was…

The Virtual Vee Map proved successful in promoting student learning in the areas of inquiry and data analysis using resources and data available on the internet. A postsurvey found that a majority of students enjoyed collecting and interpreting the data to find an answer to their own inquiry question. (Contains 3 tables and 6 figures.)

Office disciplinary referrals can be a useful index for assessing students? discipline problems as well as designing and evaluating school discipline practices. In this paper, we examined disciplinary referral data compiled from an urban elementary school (majority African American) in a midwestern city over a 2-year period. Evident issues…

This is an opportune time for researchers in higher education to examine policy via cross-state comparative analyses. Momentous court, legislative and policy developments that impact state-level higher education policy are emerging at a rapid rate. The states have emerged as postsecondary policy innovators in the areas of student financing,…

The study describes an initiative to increase retention at a 2-year college in the Northeast United States. The process involved a collaborative, intrusive advising approach to intervene with students at-risk for academic failure or experiencing difficulty with the transition to the college. Components of the mixed-method design included…

This study examines how adding strength-based data to traditional data for a student with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) impacts multidisciplinary team (MDT) members' perceptions. The participants received either a mock Traditional Report, which included only traditional data, or a mock Combined Report, which included traditional and…

Wondering how to make the study of the immune system and infectious agents more relevant to your students' lives? The online adventure series, Medical Mysteries, can provide the context and motivation. The series combines the drama of television's "CSI" episodes with science to address several of the National Science Education Content Standards.…

Purpose: To study the quality in higher education in Cambodia and explore the potential factors leading to quality in Cambodian higher education. Design/methodology/approach: Five main factors that were deemed relevant in providing quality in Cambodian higher education were proposed: academic curriculum and extra-curricular activities, teachers'…

This paper provides an example of how institutional service-learning assessment data can be used to drive organizational change. Furco's (1999) self-assessment rubric for the institutionalization of service-learning in higher education is used in modified form as the instrument through which organizational-level assessments were made. The process…

This paper describes an analysis of the ideas and attitudes of preservice teachers about the integration of technology into foreign language classroom instruction. Specifically, this study focuses on the usefulness, strengths, and weaknesses of web-based instructional environments (WBIEs) facilitated by course management systems such as WebCT.…