Research strategies related to data collection and data analysis were identified through content analysis of 427 articles in three comparative-education journals, published between 1985 and 1995, and 112 articles published between 1964 and 1966. In recent years, the strategies used have become more diverse, the geographic focus of research has…

Discussion of the four-level model of training evaluation focuses on the need for evaluation at level III, to show that training has been effective and that trainees behave differently on the job. Suggests data collection and measurement methods, including pretraining-posttraining evaluation, action plan audits, simulations, and unobtrusive…

Reviews visual anthropology, educational anthropology, and ethnographic filmmaking literature on questions concerning collection of valid video recorded data in the second language context. Examines h an interaction should be video recorded, who should be video recorded, and who should do the recording. Examples illustrate the kinds of research…

This article offers a framework for collecting and analyzing speech samples to evaluate the phonological skills of young children, or of older children with delayed speech. A protocol for phonetic transcription is provided along with a discussion of the use of diacritics. The special problems of transcribing "fuzzy speech" are addressed. (Contains…

A Web site can be the unifying force among schools with in a district. Many approaches work. Anyone who examines a few school district Web sites will appreciate the variation in content and design each provides. For example, Des Moines Iowa Public Schools, a district in which many in the community speak a second language, provides Web content in…

Data in social and behavioral sciences are often hierarchically organized. Special statistical procedures that take into account the dependence of such observations have been developed. Among procedures for 2-level covariance structure analysis, Muthen's maximum likelihood (MUML) has the advantage of easier computation and faster convergence. When…

The collection and use of data are generally accepted as important educational practices. Nevertheless, evidence exists that interventionists' data collection practices tend to be infrequent and nonsystematic. This study investigated the perspectives of early childhood interventionists about the use of data in their classrooms. Perspectives about…

Schools are under great public pressure to improve student performance and report to the public. Under the No Child Left Behind Act, schools need ways to get timely, useful and important post-graduation information for planning and reporting purposes. Tracking high school graduates can be a time-consuming and frustrating job, especially when it…

This article reports on the increasing attempts to identify what have been dubbed high-flying schools and figure out what makes them tick to bring all students to higher levels of achievement. A free Web site, launched by the New York City-based Standard & Poor's, began providing a tool that enables users to identify schools that do better…

Adolescent boys perceive their male peer group culture--and their socialization toward masculine norms emphasized within this culture--as negatively influencing their abilities to develop close male friendships. Boys who manage to develop close, male friendships, however, draw strength from these relationships to resist the social pressures of…

The Penn-Delco School District in Pennsylvania uses a walk-through process focused on looking at student work and talking with individual students. The purpose is to ascertain what those students are able to express about their own learning. At the beginning of each year, a committee of teachers at each of the district's schools meets to identify…

The insatiable institutional demands for computing cycles, network bandwidth, and storage clearly demonstrate that IT is a mission-critical function in nearly all areas of higher education. Not too long ago, the important issue for the central data center was physical size and floor space. As IT leaders struggle to meet relentlessly increasing…

Practitioner inquiry offers a strategy for creating systemic change thus increasing opportunities for all students' academic achievement. Too often, school counselors are considered ancillary in schools rather than an integral member of the practitioner base. However, school counselors are being included in the equation for all students' success.…

The educational goals and objectives provide a reference for curriculum designers, teachers, and educators, and they are required for evaluation or accreditation processes. This article presents a systematic method to state the learning objectives and analyze the consistency of a secondary school science program developed in Spain. The method is…

In the present study, we have applied a word association procedure for assessing conceptual change in science education, leaning on the presuppositions of the theory of social representations. The proposed method was applied both before and after a university population ecology course. Our results have shown that the teaching procedure can change…