Education researchers often encounter scenarios where an abrupt policy change occurs within or across jurisdictions or populations that affect key student outcomes. Difference-in-differences is a research design analysts can use to estimate causal effects of these "natural experiments." This article introduces education researchers to…

"Decolonising our approaches to educational research-- Learning from our shared experiences at Rangahau Matauranga o Aotearoa (NZCER)" shares insights from a recent workshop at NZCER focused on the questions, tensions and challenges our kairangahau are grappling with in research and evaluation. It includes a description of the workshop…

The following article comprises an autoethnographic discussion of researcher identity in school-based educational research. The research centred on a professional learning programme in which arts/education practitioners delivered workshops for teachers that used creative, arts practice with a focus on mindful techniques to support teachers'…

'QuantCrit' (Quantitative Critical Race Theory) is a rapidly developing approach that seeks to challenge and improve the use of statistical data in social research by applying the insights of Critical Race Theory. As originally formulated, QuantCrit rests on five principles; 1) the centrality of racism; 2) numbers are not neutral; 3) categories…

Concerns about the replication crisis and unreliable findings have spread through several fields, including education and psychological research. In some areas of education, researchers have begun to adopt reforms that have proven useful in other fields. These include preregistration, open materials and data, and registered reports. These reforms…

As complex systems approaches to research gain a foothold in educational research, educational researchers may be faced with unique study design challenges. Studies that do not target appropriate levels of analysis or do not capture variable change over time at a fine enough granularity run the risk of missing complex, dynamic, and emergent…

Based on their experiences from their work with two national initiatives designed to reform educational practice in U.S., the authors present seven guiding principles of evidence-based/informed educational policy and research to lay the foundation for making rigorous and comprehensive judgments about what evidence and scientific research designs…

This paper focusses on how researching is done through reflections about, or at a meta-level to, the practice over time of an enactivist mathematics education researcher. How are the key concepts of enactivist theory ("ZDM Mathematics Education," doi: 10.1007/s11858-014-0634-7, 2015) applied? This paper begins by giving an…

As lines between research paradigms continue to blur with the ever-increasing popularity of mixed methods research, there are useful, and occasionally oxymoronic, opportunities for educational researchers to juxtapose tools from opposing methods. The gold standard is just not possible in so much of what we do with small-scale research, nor is it…

This article addresses research preparation for graduate students. A major assumption is that preparation needs to be differentiated based on a student's goals. Since this is a personal proposal for research preparation, based on experience and the literature, I begin the article providing my perspective since that frames what follows. The next…

Considering Canada's Tri-Council statement on the ethical conduct for research involving human subjects, we discuss some of the ethical challenges of doing research on teaching and learning in which one's own students and teaching act as the context of such scholarly activity. We advocate establishing basic principles based in the complex…

The implementation of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) in 2002 and subsequent sanctions for lower performing school systems has resulted in a number of both positive and negative consequences. One negative effect of NCLB is that teachers report a great deal of anxiety with regard to state-mandated assessments. The authors propose that one cause for the…

Educational researchers have urged school practitioners to shift from isolated patterns of work to a communal negotiation of meaning in order to overcome problems in an uncertain environment. Nevertheless, researchers, in their inquiry processes, are still bounded within a net of epistemological premises (from objectivism on the one hand to…

This paper describes the analysis of the National Science Foundation (NSF) Math and Science Partnership (MSP) program's January 2008 Learning Network Conference (LNC). This study focuses on the methodologies used by the MSP community to generate evidence and seeks to understand topics of interest to the 320 LNC participants. The data set for this…

This article presents descriptive insights into how a national research team located in three Australian states (New South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia), is able to maintain a sustained, cohesive approach to achieving the project's aim. The initial section of the article introduces each team member prior to discussing the importance of…