This paper describes a qualitative study of seven alternative democratic program (ADP) students of a public high school in a suburb of a major city. The purpose of the study was to gain an in-depth understanding of how students in ADP reflect upon their transitions to become active members of the ADP community over time. The students were…

The fundamental question in creating coding categories for an open-ended questionnaire is how to transform a complete transcript into manageable pieces of data. This paper describes the methodology involved in coding qualitative data derived from an evaluation of the Cognitive Approaches to School Leadership (CASL) program. The first task was to…

A traditional introductory college astronomy course was restructured along constructivist lines to better foster a key component of science literacy: critical thinking about problems in science. The restructured course was lecture-free, problem-centered, and collaborative in structure. The Reflective Judgment Framework was used to better…

This paper develops an initial theory of teachers' conceptions of classroom discussion. The paper examines the thoughts of six social studies teachers from suburban and urban high schools concerning characteristics and purposes of classroom discussions and factors that seem to influence teachers' uses of these conceptions. In-depth interviews and…

Expanding on Ruth Sidney Charney's ideas in "Teaching Children to Care," this book addresses the question of adding a caring dimension to classroom practice. The book draws on case studies from six elementary classroom teachers as they incorporate some aspect of a caring curriculum to their students. The book is divided into three parts with the…

The purpose of this qualitative study was to develop a program evaluation template to be used for primary care residencies. Programs were reviewed by meta-evaluation, interviews, and a focus group. Interviews and focus groups were held with four primary care program directors, two medical educators, and one accreditation site surveyor. Survey…

This book describes how it feels and what it means to do qualitative research, and it provides support for doctoral students who choose this form of inquiry for their dissertation research. It serves as a guide to the processes and procedures involved in writing the qualitative dissertation. The reflections of research correspondents are the data…

This study used a qualitative research methodology to examine how four primary teachers used a district literacy performance assessment. Data were collected through observations, interviews, and documents. Grounded theory and NUD*IST software were used for text analysis and theory building. Findings show that a theory-grounded teacher-empowered…

A composition researcher collected stories from students with writing anxiety, using qualitative research tools of interview and interpretation. In literary theory it is not unusual to speak of anxiety of influence when referring to the torment of proving one is equal to a revered author. The critic Harold Bloom presented it as his theory of the…

This study examined the teaching methods of two Icelandic preschool teachers, their beliefs about early childhood curriculum, and the goals of their programs, emphasizing the connection between the context of the preschool teachers and their pedagogical work. Participating in the qualitative study were two preschool teachers from the city of…

The purpose of this study was to augment current knowledge regarding the antecedents of statistics anxiety and negative attitudes toward statistics among graduate students. The researchers also sought to investigate and identify promising methods for gathering and analyzing data in order to advance study in this emerging domain. Initially, 3 focus…

This review assembles what is known from studies and analyses of large-scale systemic reform initiatives aimed at mathematics and science education, especially those undertaken by state governments and the National Science Foundation. The review concentrates on qualitative investigations, which reveal whether and how these initiatives converge on…

This study interviewed five philosophically precocious individuals (PPIs), four Chinese and one American, to examine their development. Theoretical frameworks used to evaluate data were the Transcendence Evolution Model and the taxonomy of developmental strategies. The Transcendence Evolution Model posits that children's different developmental…

For faculty members who incorporate experiential or service learning pedagogies into their courses, student experiences in the field can be difficult, emotionally charged, and full of unexpected outcomes. This paper presents the findings from a qualitative study of student lived experiences in the political science course "Democracy and…

This study focused on things learned from teaching doctoral students (17 doctoral and 2 masters students) about qualitative analytic strategies. Researchers used a grounded theory approach while simultaneously drawing from literature related to adult learning theories, doctoral student training, and curricula development, all of which informed…