Participatory action research (PAR) represents an approach that is deeply consonant with counseling psychology's commitments to social equity and action. However, counseling psychologists who would like to study this literature, or who would like to write about a project of their own, may discover that the reporting of PAR is not straightforward:…

Mergers are common phenomena in higher education institutions. Improving educational quality is typically one of the stated goals of university mergers. Yet, little information exists about how merging institutions approach this goal. This paper presents results from a study of planning documents created prior to four mergers in the Finnish higher…

In this study, it was aimed to evaluate how the difference the early childhood education in Turkey and OECD countries. The outstanding point evaluated by the teachers about the difference between the education in Turkey and that in OECD countries and the conditions needing to be improved was the compare of age groups benefiting from the services…

A study was launched in an educational setting where giftedness is not officially recognized o explore intellectually gifted students' experience of family background and support, their age and means of identification, the degree of support received in school, and the understanding they experienced from a primary to a tertiary education level. In…

This qualitative study attempts to determine favorite TV dramas of children from two rural schools and analyze children's discourse about messages and values of TV dramas. As parallel to children's views, teacher perceptions on critical media literacy were investigated in the study. This study aims to explore the content--messages/values--of…

The MA Entrance Examinations (MAEE) held in Iran since 1990 are frequently criticized as being invalid, unstandardized exams with lots of problem in terms of principles of testing in general and test construction in particular (for instance, Jafarpur, 1996). To make sound judgments about such objections, the present study dealt with a content…

Many classroom instructors use collaborative learning activities to promote student learning, raise academic achievement, and support cognitive engagement. We conducted a collaborative assessment in a small undergraduate educational psychology course (N = 31) and used survey methodology to explore student perceptions. Taken together, our…

This paper reports a 5-year design experiment on cumulative knowledge building as part of an international project. Through a longitudinal study and analysis of cumulative research data, we sought to answer the question, "what happened and why in knowledge building?" Research data constitute messages which participants have written into a shared…

This paper reports on research conducted over a two-year period in a large Educational Psychology Service (EPS) in England. Researchers were keen to ascertain the views of young people and EPS members about young people being directly involved in educational decision-making and how their "genuine" involvement in such decision-making…

Hollywood films partially construct how Americans think about education. Recent work on the representation of schools in American cinema has highlighted the role of class difference in shaping school film genres. It has also advanced the idea that a nuanced understanding of American individualism helps to explain why the different class genres are…

In Europe, national quality assurance systems of higher education have begun to be established. In Finland, this development has had the consequence of forcing universities to take notice of assessment procedures. However, little is known about the procedures taking place in individual academic departments as a result of this pan-European trend.…

This paper presents a small-scale exploratory study, which focuses on the impact of formative assessment that was provided as part of a writing intervention in a first-year undergraduate programme. Qualitative data were collected to find evidence of use of formative feedback, and of resulting improvements, as well as to shed some light on…

This grounded-theory study involved how Finnish children describe their ideal school and learning environment and considers how their notions should be valued in the development of schools to better respond to the challenges of the future. The school children, aged 10-12 years, participated in the study by writing a story about a school in which…

Portfolio analysis is a simple yet powerful management tool. Programs and activities are placed on a grid with mission along one axis and financial return on the other. The four boxes of the grid (low mission, low return; high mission, low return; high return, low mission; high return, high mission) help managers identify which programs might be…

This article seeks to identify the relation between policy and lived life, for the small child in the Danish creche. To accomplish this, the article integrates demography, traditions, national curriculum and psychological, educational, and recent developments in research. It is an attempt to reveal knowledge and consequences, by conducting the…