Instruments for evaluating the implementation of inquiry science in K-12 classrooms are necessary if evaluators and researchers are to know the extent to which programs are implemented as intended and the extent to which inquiry science teaching accounts for student learning. For evaluators and researchers to be confident about the quality of…

This article illustrates how an emerging graduate researcher's conceptions of postpositivist, feminist, and poststructural theories of educational research affected data gathering and initial analysis. These macro theories are exemplified as the voices of an educational researcher, a feminist researcher, and a poststructural researcher,…

With support from the Lumina Foundation, the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU) has launched HACU's Hispanic Higher Education Research Collective (H3ERC). The first major task of this virtual gathering of researchers and practitioners in Hispanic higher education has been to assess the state of our knowledge of the key issues…

The Common Core of Data (CCD) nonfiscal surveys consist of data submitted annually to NCES by state education agencies (SEAs) in the 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the four outlying areas (American Samoa, Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands), the Department of Defense (DoD)…

This article provides an innovative meta-framework comprising strategies designed to guide qualitative data collection in the 21st century. We present a meta-framework comprising strategies for collecting data from interviews, focus groups, observations, and documents/material culture. We present a template for collecting nonverbal data during…

For more than a decade, the Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning has supported the Teaching and California's Future (TCF) initiative to provide California policymakers with objective and timely data on the state's teacher workforce. Each year, the Center publishes a report on the status of teaching profession. This year's report focuses…

This documentation is for the revised file (Version 1b) of the National Center for Education Statistics' (NCES) Common Core of Data (CCD) National Public Education Financial Survey (NPEFS) for school year 2008-2009, fiscal year 2009 (FY 09). It contains a brief description of the data collection along with information required to understand and…

This article explores the use of walking interviews as a research method. In spite of a wave of interest in methods which take interviewing out of the "safe," stationary environment, there has been limited work critically examining the techniques for undertaking such work. Curiously for a method which takes an explicitly spatial approach, few…

In discussing the place of diverse qualitative research within psychological science, the authors highlight the potential permeability of the quantitative-qualitative boundary and identify different ways of increasing communication between researchers specializing in different methods. Explicating diversity within qualitative research is…

In this article, the author argues that Method sections in social science research reports, particularly those that employ qualitative methods, often lack sufficient detail to make any results that follow from the analytic method trustworthy. The author provides a brief review of the evolution of the Method section from the 1960s to the present,…

The Programme for International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) will establish technical standards and guidelines to ensure that the survey design and implementation processes of PIAAC yield high-quality and internationally comparable data. This document provides a revised version of the technical standards and guidelines originally…

The purpose of our article is to illustrate the use of mixed methods research as necessary to uncover maximum information and perspective, increase corroboration of the data, and render less biased and more accurate conclusions. This study used the case study method to closely examine the people, issues, programmes and topics related to the…

The Center for the Advancement of Engineering Education (CAEE) began in January 2003 with a grant from the National Science Foundation (ESI-0227558). Two NSF Directorates, Engineering and Education and Human Resources, oversee the Center's work. The Academic Pathways Study (APS) is part of the Scholarship on Learning Engineering element of the…

Policy interest in international surveys on Adult Learning (AL) has increased strongly. AL survey data are used as benchmarks for a country's educational system. However, results of key indicators like participation in learning activities often vary remarkably between different data sources. Stating that these differences are due to varying…

In this essay, the author tries to look forward into the 21st century to divine three things: (i) What skills will researchers in the future need to solve the most pressing problems? (ii) What are some of the most likely candidates to be those problems? and (iii) What are some current areas of research that seem mined out and should not distract…