We interrogate the opportunities and challenges of using mixed methods (MM) within a developmental evaluation (DE) context by drawing on two illustrative cases that investigated educational change in Canada. Methods: Multi-case design and cross-case analysis, with a focus on examining common patterns across the two cases, enabling new ways of…

Consultation relies on story. This is true for researchers, for practitioners, and for clients. Given this fact, qualitative and mixed methods (QMM) research are particularly well suited to listening to the stories that compose the clinical practice of consultation in order to extend understanding and to support improvement and innovation. In this…

Institutional researchers are often tasked with assessing why college-wide initiatives succeed or fail. This can be a difficult task: researchers need to discriminate between multiple feasible explanations, work with limited data, and produce compelling narratives. Process tracing is a qualitative methodology that enables researchers to make valid…

All research accounts are partial. Who we are--our biographies, experiences, ideological stances, and so on--affects the entirety of the research process. Who we are shapes what types of research questions we find interesting, how we frame our research objectives, how we collect data, how we analyze these data, and how we present our findings. In…

Intended to guide scholars who are new to qualitative research, this methods brief focuses mostly on what reviewers look for in manuscripts submitted for publication. The author acknowledges that reviewers' preferences likely reflect their theoretical perspectives, research-oriented coursework, mentors, and research and writing experiences. The…

The growth of learning analytics as a means to improve student learning outcomes means that student data is being collected, analyzed, and applied in previously unforeseen ways. As the use of this data continues to shape academic and support interventions, there is increasing need for ethical reflection on "operational" approvals for…

There is no defined theory for teaching Qualitative Inquiry, and very few studies have focused on the topic. This study is a qualitative case study focused on the Qualitative Methods course that I teach at a college of education in Israel. The aim of the study is to explore and describe the course, to provide a true picture of my pedagogy, and to…

We present an approach to operationalizing discovery in literacy research by describing a diagnostic, abductive methodology. This methodology treats products of videotaped interviews and participant-authored footage as narrative data produced in scenes of literacy sponsorship. In describing the operations of our diagnostic approach, we foreground…

In 1999, the National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded funds to the Evaluation Center at Western Michigan University to conduct an external evaluation of the Advanced Technological Education (ATE) program. ATE, a federally mandated program designed to increase the number and quality of skilled technicians in the U.S. workforce, has funded over 346…

This article considers the potential for a researcher to use their own creative practice as a method of data collection. Much of the published material in this field focuses on more theoretical positions, with limited use being made of specific PhDs that illustrate the context in which practice was undertaken by the researcher. It explores…

Purpose: This article seeks to address the interface between individual learning facilitators that use course management systems (CMS) data to support decision-making and course design and institutional infrastructure providers that are responsible for institutional business intelligence. Design/methodology/approach: The design of a data warehouse…

This paper discusses the nature of research and identifies some of the questions which it is important to address at the planning stage and to return to throughout the life of any research study. In a discussion of the nature of research, it is noted that research findings must be potentially generalizable. The criteria for identifying research…

The training of researchers in the educational technology field has continued in the traditional vein of the experimental paradigm. This document describes a workshop presented to balance that training and to prepare students to undertake research in a non-traditional way. The workshop aimed to acquaint students with non-causal naturalistic…

The movement toward integration of qualitative and quantitative research methods within the same study has been most evident in social policy research. Four major approaches to integrating can be identified in recent studies. The sequential, the parallel, and the fused models have been rather widely used. The interactive model, developed during…

Research and instructional role strains are identified, based on the use of large-scale mail surveys for college self-study that are used to teach introductory research methodology. The two organizational hierarchies, the research model and the instructional model, are examined. Experiences at Northwestern University, Northeastern Illinois…