Students from low-income backgrounds are attending institutions of higher education in larger numbers than ever before, but their actual degree attainment rates remain low. While these students may not have parents who attended college and lack pre-college rigor, Mexican-American female students from low-income backgrounds are finding ways to…

School grades provide an easily understandable metric to measure the performance of a school. Parents and the general public can use the school grade and its associated components to understand how well each school is serving its students. The school grades calculation was revised substantially for the 2014-15 school year to implement statutory…

What would it take for all students completing high school in Washington to be ready for their next step? What common knowledge and skills should students have to be successful in an array of pathways leading to countless careers? For the past two years, the State Board of Education (SBE), with the support of a National Association of State Boards…

In this essay, the authors begin to "unpack the invisible knapsack" of mathematics education research privilege. They present short statements representing the multiplicity of their respective identities; acknowledging that efforts to understand privilege and oppression are often supported and constrained by identities. The authors then…

Background: There is increasing interest from review authors about including non-randomized studies (NRS) in their systematic reviews of health care interventions. This series from the Ottawa Non-Randomized Studies Workshop consists of six papers identifying methodological issues when doing this. Aim: To format the guidance from the preceding…

The focus of this article is on the role and contribution of policy research in contexts of social transformation. With reference to education transformation policies in post-apartheid South Africa, the argument is developed that research studies vary in their contribution to change, as a function of the paradigmatic assumptions and methodological…

This audit was undertaken prospectively to examine the compliance of a group of psychiatrists against guidelines they developed for monitoring the onset of metabolic syndrome, a potential side effect of antipsychotic medication, especially second generation or atypical ones. Phase 1 of the audit was to set standards by a questionnaire survey of…

This article examines the use of photography within the profession of early childhood education (including teacher education) and provides a post-structural critique of its use in light of ethical implications, particularly with regard to power relations between the various stakeholders, including children, their families, teachers, schools,…

This chapter discusses Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) as they apply to the SoTL. Specifically, it describes when SoTL projects must receive IRB approval, why they must get IRB approval, the review process, and some special issues of concern with regard to SoTL.

In the first part of this series, which appeared in the February 2013 issue of "Techniques" (see EJ1015189), the authors discussed the need for providing a safe and healthy learning environment in career and technical programs, and introduced a model for ensuring that this type of environment exists. The critical core component of…

This article suggests a framework for evaluating and implementing environmental education (EE) curricula in hopes of furthering EE as a mode of living to be embodied, rather than as a subject to be learned. We argue that the current iterations of EE in K-12 schools stand to benefit by attending to Dewey's criteria for educative experience:…

An important category of seemingly maladaptive decisions involves failure to postpone gratification. A person pursuing a desirable long-run outcome may abandon it in favor of a short-run alternative that has been available all along. Here we present a theoretical framework in which this seemingly irrational behavior emerges from stable preferences…

Data mining is concerned with detecting patterns of data in raw datasets, which are then used to unearth knowledge that might not have been discovered using conventional querying or statistical methods. This discovered knowledge has been used to empower decision makers in countless applications spanning across many multi-disciplinary areas…

This study examines how the courts have addressed the restraint, detainment, and seclusion of students in public schools. The study includes an analysis of 100 court cases on the topic of restraint, detainment, and seclusion of students in public schools, which occurred in state and federal jurisdictions, from 1977 to 2012. Cases were examined…

This article describes the author's experiences of working with cancer patients/survivors both individually and in support groups for many years, across several settings. It also documents current best-practice guidelines for the psychosocial treatment of cancer patients/survivors and their families. The author's view of the important qualities…