Applied research is supposed to take the perspective with the highest degree of corroboration as a basis for action. The realm of organizational perspectives is characterized, however, with a multitude of competing research programs, seldom tested against each other. Epistemological and methodological issues overwhelm inquiry in applied research.…

This paper shares the findings of an inquiry that evaluated 50 survey articles published in a refereed journal, "Educational Administration Quarterly," by examining the 53 sample designs reported in the articles. The paper presents a typology of the sample designs identified, discusses the problems of sample selection and estimation…

This paper describes how an ethnographer proceeded in a study of group identify, voice, and participation in the greater culture of gay and bisexual college men at a large research university. The researcher, himself a heterosexual man, conceptualized the investigation as a crossing of cultural borders. The investigator initially attended several…

This paper posits a taxonomy for categorizing issues that arise in the evaluation of Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITSs). The taxonomy has three dimensions: Life Cycle of Evaluation, Research Issues, and Methodological Issues. The Life Cycle dimension has four levels: pre-experimental, laboratory study, field study, and initial operational test…

This paper explains how teachers can set up good research problems to study in their classrooms. The purpose of the research is to provide teachers with a tool for reflection, change, learning, and renewal in student-centered classrooms. Teacher-researchers learn to ask critical questions, collect data, document findings, and share results with…

The essays in this collection bring together the experiences and insights of teachers involved in teacher research and learning to work with others. The essays provide an unvarnished view of the tensions that arise between teachers and their university collaborators and the problems involved in balancing teaching and research agendas. The…

This monograph for institutional researchers on questionnaire survey research aims to be both a guide to the basic steps of survey research and a useful reference tool. The monograph is in an informal, question and answer format and organized around the various steps of the survey research process. Chapter I discusses planning the survey including…

This study explored the utility of developing an alumni survey specifically designed for graduate alumni to increase response rates and provide specific information for planning. The previous year's survey of graduate alumni had seen a very low participation rate and those that had responded offered several negative comments on the survey design.…

This discussion of the contested/problematic concept (i.e., words that are open to debate and discussion as to their meaning) focuses on the notion of theory as one example in educational technology. Arguing that the notions of contested and problematic suggest debate, re-interpretation, and the need for dialogue with others to establish meaning,…

This paper begins by reviewing the results of research on the potential of adjunct questions for teaching both rote recall and intellectual skills, i.e., concept learning, problem solving, and rule learning. It is argued that greater understanding of what kinds of questions best support intellectual skills learning will promote effective…

Assessing community viability with multiple-indicators (including education) is a necessary step in creating effective leadership in rural communities and schools. As part of a larger study of the effects of leadership patterns on community viability, this report examines the procedure for measuring community viability within the socio-geographic…

Research on teaching can be concerned with teaching in general or it can be conducted with a single kind of subject matter. Which kind of research is more advantageous? This issue arises in the planning of programs of research on teaching. The generic approach looks for uniformities, concepts, and principles that apply across all or many subject…

If they are to develop more effective social intervention strategies, social scientists must pay attention to social causality in their research. This will lead to more credibility for the social sciences and more support for research funds. Social causality is defined as a social process that produces a change in some dependent variable. It…

A 2-to-the-kth-power mirror-image design is defined as one in which repeated observations of subjects occurs among the levels of a usual 2-to-the-kth-power design, but there is the restriction that no subject may receive a given level of any factor more than once. Such a restriction might arise, for example, if a subject's response is expected to…

An alternative research methodology is presented which focuses on the aims and values of education while attending to the learner as an elaborate, dynamic, everchanging total system. A summary covers the reactive, preactive, proactive, and spiralling learner systems, each of which meet the definitional system requirement of being dynamic, having a…