What do different research methods and approaches "do" in practice? The article seeks to discuss this point by drawing upon socio-material research approaches and empirical examples taken from the early stages of an extensive case study on an interdisciplinary project between two multidisciplinary fields of study, education and computer…

The study aimed to explore the impact of an SDM-based professional development program on teacher discourse. Two types of discourse, authoritative and dialogic discourses, was the focus of the search. From a Bakhtinian standpoint, authoritative words are viewed as located in a distanced zone, do not reflect any individual point of view, and are…

This article offers insight into what makes literacy tasks engaging or disengaging based on observations of and interviews with students. In a yearlong study of a sixth-grade classroom in a Title I school, students engaged in integrated literacy-social studies instruction. Researchers studied the degree of task openness and the degree to which…

To identify the broader autism phenotype (BAP), the Family History Interview subject and informant versions and an observational tool (Impression of Interviewee), were developed. This study investigated whether the instruments differentiated between parents of children with autism, and parents of children with Down syndrome (DS). The BAP scores of…

Following the election of the Conservative--Liberal Democrat UK coalition Government in 2010, there has been an urgent intensification and focus upon early years numeracy and literacy and promoting systematic synthetic phonics. This paper argues that the current narrowing of early years assessment, along with increased inspection and surveillance,…

The conceptions early childhood educators (ECEs) hold about infants can guide their pedagogical practices in ways that can enable and constrain infants' experiences. Literature regarding infants' development and the role of adults in infant learning theoretically positions infants as both being capable of independent learning, and needing adult…

Popular culture is often a site of contestation in preschool classrooms. A multisited ethnographic design revealed preschools employed varied strategies to limit popular culture. Teacher and children's actions were considered through Michel de Certeau's (1984) concepts of tactics and strategies. Interviews and observations revealed children were…

The current study examined undergraduate student understanding of, and interest in, course material as potential antecedents to student experiences of flow within a classroom setting. In addition, the social, informative, and contagious nature of flow were examined, as was the influence of being in flow during classroom coverage of material on…

Increasingly, states and districts are combining student growth measures with rigorous, rubric-aligned teacher observations in constructing teacher evaluation measures. Although the student growth or value-added components of these measures have received much research and policy attention, the results of this study suggest that the data generated…

Vygotsky (1987) stated that the restructured form of everyday concepts learned at home and in the community interact with scientific concepts introduced in formal school settings, leading to a higher level of scientific thinking for school-aged children. But, what does this mean for the scientific learning of infants and toddlers? What kinds of…

Objective: Assess impact and feasibility of a Tobacco-Free Ambassador Program on campus policy compliance. Participants: Trained Ambassadors made 253 visits to campus sites over 15 months to observe and/or approach violators. Methods: Policy violators were observed at 23 locations during Wave 1 (April-June 2012) and/or Wave 2 (April-June 2013).…

This article presents the results of a Master's study conducted at the Graduate Program in Education of Universidade Federal do Mato Grosso, which sought to understand how educational practices occur in the teaching of art in Youth and Adult Education in Cuiabá city, Mato Grosso state, Brazil, using qualitative, descriptive and interpretative…

Drawing on sequential and multimodal analysis of video-recorded classroom interactions, the paper examines in detail the interactional practices and verbal and bodily displays that serve to (re-)establish a congruency between the teacher's expectation with regard to the participants' relative knowledge and the students' actual knowledge claims. By…

In this paper, an inquiry-based ubiquitous gaming approach was proposed. The objective of the study was to enhance students' performances in in-field learning activities. To show the advantages of the approach, an experiment was carried out to assess the effects of it on students' learning achievement, motivation, critical thinking, and problem…

In this paper, we consider the implications of a commitment to acknowledging the role of context within a research practice partnership. We outline the approach to doing so within a design-based research intervention with 42 schools across three Pacific Island countries to improve literacy learning and language development. In doing so, the paper…