The author wishes to divide this essay into two sections, one indicating things he might have added to a few earlier works, and a second indicating a project or two that he did not complete but would like to have done. First he discusses the incomplete projects. He begins by saying that he has done a lot of work on teacher organizations and has…

The potential for career guidance to impact on well-being has received insufficient attention in the UK. There are both conceptual and empirical reasons to expect that the impacts may be positive, but a lack of evidence directly testing this proposition. Career guidance has commonalities with therapeutic counselling suggesting analogous effects,…

Bullying has been around for ages, but in the past decade it has been in the spotlight because of suicidal deaths and a push for legislation to put these bullies behind bars. Numerous national surveys report that a large percentage of bullying in schools is a form of direct bullying. Recently all but one state has now enacted harsher anti-bullying…

In the field of higher education there are few places reserved for philosophical exploration, and this, this author argues, can limit and distort the cartography. Higher education research tends to be framed as the empirical process of collecting and analysing qualitative or quantitative data. But this conception of research leaves little space…

The review by Lillard et al. (2013) highlighted the need for additional research to better clarify the nature of the relationship between pretend play and development. However, the authors did not provide a proposal for how to structure the direction of this future work. Here, we provide a possible framework for generating additional research.…

To respond to the articles in the current issue, I begin with an amalgamated conception of a transactional universe of reciprocal reading and composing processes that includes cognitive and social processes. Next, I situate the four studies in the current issue according to their epistemological emphases in the transactional conception. Three…

Across Canada many initiatives have been initiated to generate more interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education; however, no single or comprehensive overview has been conducted that takes into account the impact of these STEM initiatives on teaching/learning outcomes in K-12 education. This knowledge synthesis of…

The purpose of this review is to provide an overview of the evolution of social presence research in the field of distance education and identified problems in investigating this construct. The researchers took an integrative review on existing social presence studies to answer three questions: (a) How definitions of social presence evolved since…

Engagement is one of the most widely misused and overgeneralized constructs found in the educational, learning, instructional, and psychological sciences. The articles in this special issue represent a wide range of traditions and highlight several key conceptual, theoretical, methodological, and analytical issues related to defining and measuring…

The prevalence of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in adults is estimated to be at least 1% (Brugha et al., 2011), yet almost all ASD research focuses on children. Adult intervention studies, in particular, are few in number and poor in quality (Bishop-Fitzpatrick, Minshew, & Eack, 2013), and support networks for adults with ASD are much more…

Research suggests that there are substantial (albeit mostly indirect) relationships between school leadership and student achievement. However, it is challenging for practitioners and policymakers to determine whether and how school leaders are making a difference in student achievement. Through its Education Research Grants Program (84.305A), the…

The speed and extent of modern school accountability have obscured the history of testing and accountability. This brief introduction identifies central themes of historical research into educational accountability and recurring traits associated with accountability practices. We hope our colleagues and this special issue will also help to…

We reflect on ways in which research presented in earlier chapters responds to challenges of generating an African child development field and identify additional issues calling for the field's attention. The chapters collectively display a variety of African contexts and reflexive evidence of the authors' African cultural roots. Connecting…

Global concerns about the consequences of disasters, political violence, disease, malnutrition, maltreatment, and other threats to human development and well-being have sparked a surge of international interest in resilience science. This article highlights progress and issues in research that aims to understand variations in human adaptation to…

This paper makes a plea for the construction of a common agenda for higher education and science, technology and innovation (STI) policy research. The public higher education and research sector in all countries is currently in the grip of several challenges arising from increased accountability, internationalization and in some cases dwindling…