In this article, Lois Weis and Michelle Fine introduce critical bifocality as a way to render visible the relations between groups to structures of power, to social policies, to history, and to large sociopolitical formations. In this collaboration, the authors draw upon ethnographic examples highlighting the macro-level structural dynamics…

Education, whether formal or informal, is perceived as development and language is the major medium of instruction and communication through which knowledge is transmitted. Documented substantial evidence indicates that Africa was on a positive trend to steady development before colonialism set in. Colonialism ushered in a foreign medium of…

Scientific freedom and openness are hallmarks of academia: relative to their counterparts in industry, academics maintain discretion over their research agenda and allow others to build on their discoveries. This paper examines the relationship between openness and freedom, building on recent models emphasizing that, from an economic perspective,…

The last decades have seen tremendous growth and transformation in the Internet's commercial landscape. Underneath this success, however, the underlying network architecture has shown a marked resistance to change; it is now described as stagnant and ossified. Numerous design proposals have been developed by researchers, implemented in code, and…

The paper describes the processes and outcomes of the ranking of LIS journal titles by Australia's LIS researchers during 2007-8, first through the Australian federal government's Research Quality Framework (RQF) process, and then by its replacement, the Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) initiative. The requirement to rank the journals'…

The paper reports on a study examining the issues facing vocational education and training (VET) practitioners who aspire to undertake formal research and move towards publishing their research. Research participants were drawn from attendees at a publishing workshop that was mounted at the 2008 conference of the Australian Vocational Education…

This paper presents a critical overview of the way in which higher education institutions (HEIs) in the UK have had their research activity subject to review. There have been six such reviews to date, the first two carried out by the Universities Grants Committee and, from 1992, by its replacement, the four UK higher education (HE) funding bodies…

This article commenting on Greenhow, Robelia, and Hughes (2009) examines the potential strengths and weaknesses of Web 2.0 in supporting student collaborative creativity in light of sociocultural conditions of knowledge creation. Weaknesses and challenges are identified related to the embedded and dispersed representation of community knowledge,…

Two recent books provide varied resources for exploring ethical issues in the social sciences. Reflection on ethical issues aims to sensitize scholars to a range of consequences of their research, and to scholars' responsibilities to their discipline, their colleagues, and the public. This review article assesses the utility of these texts (and of…

Understanding students' multiple goals in real learning contexts is an emerging area of importance for educators and researchers investigating student motivation in classrooms. This qualitative study conducted over an academic year investigates the multiple goals articulated by seven 11-year-old students and explores relationships between goals…

Objective: Both alcohol use and gambling are behaviors that can be problematic for many college students; however, it is not clear whether the relationship between the 2 exists for students who have recently entered college. Participants: The sample included 908 first-year college students who were surveyed in fall 2005, approximately 1 month…

This paper investigates bibliographic control of government publications and gray literature in Turkey, in order to determine what further measures are needed to support researchers in both Turkey and abroad. It reports the circumstances surrounding the creation of "The Bibliography of Government Publications" prepared in 1971, and…

As evidence mounts indicating that the quality of family relationships affects family member health and that the health of family members influences the quality of family relationships and family functioning, it becomes crucial for family scientists to determine and understand the mechanisms underlying these associations. An empirical resource…

This paper addresses an important problem that may really be a pseudoproblem perpetuated by a current artificial or even political need to isolate researchers, evaluators, and theorists and put them in conceptual-methodological boxes. In this paper, we argue that scholars of all kinds should focus on the nouns (i.e., research, evaluation, theory)…

This collection of historical accounts provides diverse perspectives on the structure and culture of the community of researchers who participate in activities of the Australasian Science Education Research Association (ASERA). It describes the formation of the Association, and identifies major changes and challenges for the ever growing and…