Few people would disagree with the principle of evidence-informed practice. Actually using evidence to improve teaching and learning is not so easy to achieve. The Local Government Agency recently asked the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) to find out how Local Education Authorities (LEAs) are helping schools to use research…

This article highlights the British Educational Research Association (BERA) conference, which took place on September 15-18 at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST) campus in Manchester. In this conference, delegates were told that the UK teaching profession needs to develop new "standards of evidence"…

One goal of professional development is to improve student achievement through improved teacher practice. The middle school philosophy, which supports the rationale that student learning is inextricably interwoven into the fabric of an active learning environment, contains many promising practices that "mirror" what is often considered to be high…

This paper focuses on the experiences of an early career researcher involved in a mentoring relationship at the University of Western Sydney (UWS), Australia. A discussion of the research literature is reported to highlight the attributes of mentoring relationships and the different forms of mentoring. The mentoring relationship that the author is…

The purpose of this article is to synthesize recent work on aggression and victimization in educational settings from an ecological perspective. Four questions directed towards school psychologists and bullying researchers guide this review: (a) How do bullies fit into their peer ecologies? (b) How do victims fit into their peer ecologies? (c) How…

This paper highlights perspectives on action research in education, health and social care and was originally presented as a keynote at the International Practitioner Research Conference and Collaborative Action Research Conference in 2005. The paper links with the other conference keynote given by Stephen Kemmis, co-author of "Becoming…

Indigenous communities remain concerned about research into their lives, their control over and participation in the research process and the public dissemination of knowledge. The relationship between researcher and participant and the product of this relationship has been traditionally cast as a dualism with one side being the less powerful,…

Data from Sloan-C snapshot of the status of online education in the US indicate that online education is becomingly increasingly a part of the long-term goals and strategies of many institutions. Technical education has begun taking advantage of the online market by offering online education at the bachelor's and master's level. However, the…

This article sketches a research agenda for the further study of community college student transitions. Specific techniques are depicted as are potential data sources that can be used to pursue that agenda. The role of student tracking systems in transition research is discussed as well as the applicability of national surveys to the study of…

This article takes a broad, and somewhat personal, sweep across the last 30 years or so of educational history in the United Kingdom (UK)and highlights some of the challenges concerning research, policy and practice on teaching and learning which developed over the period. Issues associated with academic agency are considered and a narrative of…

Researchers and practitioners in health behavior and health education (HBHE) can play a pivotal leadership role in the integration of genomic advances to improve the public's health. The purpose of this article is to outline research and practice opportunities at the intersection of genomics and HBHE. We begin this article by briefly summarizing…

There is a growing trend in education to advocate for the inclusion of teacher researcher voices in local, state, national and international conversations about classroom teaching and learning. While many scholars agree that teacher researchers can, do, and should make important contributions to the educational research community, much remains to…

The purpose of this study is to explore elementary students' views of (NOS) to see how well they align with national reform recommendations (AAAS, 1993; NRC, 1996). Using an open-ended questionnaire coupled with one-on-one interviews of fourth-grade students conducted at the end of the school year, the researchers explored students' understandings…

The researcher was fortunate to be a member of an international development programme for library and information science (LIS) in South Africa (DISSAnet), and has benefited from the experience to the extent that research and development in the LIS field is ongoing. In order to promote this kind of initiative and to share the experience with those…

Teachers who conduct research in the context of their own teaching practices can contribute to knowledge about reform-based instruction. This article provides examples that illustrate research by elementary, middle school, high school, and college faculty as well as the use of data such as transcripts of discussion, reflective journals, and copies…