While the use of ethnographic and qualitative research methods has spread across many fields of educational inquiry, until recently this has had little impact on research in science education. However, there is currently a methodological shift taking place in this area, prompted by the rise of a sociocultural perspective on cognition, which sees…

When women work in male-dominated organizations, do they form collaborative networks with other women or do they take on the practices of the male-dominated community they are a part of? In this paper, we explore how female staff and volunteer members participate within a male-dominated non-profit organization. We use communities of practice as a…

To explore dominant theoretical influences on parent education, emerging views of child nature and development, and implicit strategies for recruiting parental agreement and participation, this study analyzed "Radio Talk," a 1920s parent education program produced by child psychologists in Minnesota. A qualitative analysis of the…

A qualitative case study examined professor and student perceptions regarding how professors use communication to build their classroom credibility and the influence of the professor's race in the establishment of credibility. The research design reflects the vantage point of an African-American female researcher acknowledging and incorporating…

Ethnographers have traditionally encountered problems in conducting qualitative research in elite settings. The powerful, in this case, the administrative and political elite in the United Kingdom, have considerable constitutional, legal, and cultural resources that enable them to deflect or channel any research in which they are the objects of…

Surveys that ask faculty to estimate how much time they spend on teaching, research, and service do not allow for activities which fulfill more than one purpose, fail to capture the patterns of actions that faculty perform to fulfill each purpose; and do not show how different features of organizational and disciplinary contexts affect the types…

Qualitative evaluation and quantitative evaluation are discussed, examining how the perspective of each can and should create a critical debate that encourages inquiry instead of hostility. To achieve the major goal of linking evaluation information to the organization's culture, the evaluator needs to use multiple methods in a responsive,…

This paper explores the impact that the evaluation industry has had on the development and implementation of social policy and programs, primarily as carried out by the U.S. Departments of Labor and Health and Human Services. In addition, major tools evaluators have developed and used, and the institutional arrangements through which they have…

A qualitative study examined what is taught in a whole language classroom, how it is taught, and what changes in curriculum and instruction occur and why. A third-grade teacher, who had taught for 5 years and was considered an exemplary teacher by her principal and colleagues, was interviewed. Nineteen children in the teacher's heterogeneous…

A qualitative study analyzed the kind of questions that second graders posed for discussion when the only directive was to ask anything that seemed important or interesting. Subjects, students in a second-grade classroom in Athens, Georgia, represented a cross section of their community. They were approximately equally divided in regard to race,…

The Qualitative Studies section of the Proceedings contains the following 10 papers: "An Alternative to Alternative Media'" (James Hamilton); "A Critical Assessment of News Coverage of the Ethical Implications of Genetic Testing" (David A. Craig); "Earth First! and the Boundaries of Postmodern Environmental…

This study examines the use of research techniques to generate information that informs curriculum development, in order to develop more powerful social studies curricula for the primary grades. The paper describes the studies of four implementations of units, all done in self-contained second-grade classrooms in suburban schools with traditional…

Student projects in both research and statistics classes promote active learning and critical thinking not found in more passive types of course delivery. Students start the dialogue of researchers as they internalize the process of conducting research projects with "real world" issues of interest to them in introductions to research and…

A large government agency had been experiencing a variety of changes. The new head of the agency approached communication researchers about doing analyses of the effectiveness of communication in the agency. The researchers conducted two studies: a qualitative one to identify organizational and organizational communication themes, and a…

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the design and implementation of 10 neuropathology interactive videodisc instructional (IVI) modules used by Michigan State University undergraduate medical students in the College of Osteopathic Medicine and the College of Human Medicine. The modules were developed by Michigan State University personnel…