Participatory research can be promoted by scientific intermediary units, such as Science Shops. The overarching goal of these initiatives is thereby to foster a process of co-creation of the research questions to address societal needs that are relevant to scientific research and society at large. The InSPIRES project was a Horizon Europe…

Despite the rising popularity of big data, there is speculation that evaluators have been slow adopters of these new statistical approaches. Several possible reasons have been offered for why this is the case: ethical concerns, institutional capacity, and evaluator capacity and values. In this method note, we address one of these barriers and aim…

The reason for conducting the present case study was the problems the researchers encountered during data collection for another research project (Primary Study) entitled "The effects of virtual versus traditional flipped classes on EFL learners' grammar knowledge, self-regulation, and autonomy." Two online questionnaires were…

The search for necessary and sufficient causes of some outcome of interest, referred to as "configurational comparative research," has long been one of the main preoccupations of evaluation scholars and practitioners. However, only the last three decades have witnessed the evolution of a set of formal methods that are sufficiently…

Becker (1967) poses the question "Whose side are we on?," a question which has become an enduring part of discussions within social scientific methodology. This paper explores the key issues in Becker's argument and considers its relevance to researchers today, locating this within a consideration of evaluation-based research and policy.…

Simulations and games offer interactive tasks that can elicit rich data, providing evidence of complex skills that are difficult to measure with more conventional items and tests. However, one notable challenge in using such technologies is making sense of the data generated in order to make claims about individuals or groups. This article…

Psychometrics has recently undergone extensive criticism within the medical education literature. The use of quantitative measurement using psychometric instruments such as response scales is thought to emphasize a narrow range of relevant learner skills and competencies. Recent reviews and commentaries suggest that a paradigm shift might be…

The CLASS (classroom assessment scoring system) has become integrally linked with quality rating and improvement systems (QRIS) throughout the United States and other international locations. This relationship reinforces the neoliberal consumer-based perspectives of quality and devalues localized perspectives. This article challenges the notion of…

The paper examines the benefits claimed for action learning at individual, organisational and inter-organisational levels. It goes on to identify both generic difficulties in evaluating development programmes and action learning specifically. The distinction between formative and summative evaluation is considered and a summative evaluation…

A new approach to researching school effects on higher education participation is proposed here, which combines insights from the school effectiveness field of research with sociological theories and concepts of schooling. In doing so, it draws attention to some of the problems with the dominant approach often taken in this area and attempts to…

In the current article, we consider the influential position of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and discuss several methodological areas that demonstrate the need for caution when using and interpreting PISA results. We motivate our argument by briefly describing the program's increased influence in educational policy…

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…

Black and Hispanic students are undeniably underidentified as gifted and underrepresented in gifted education. The underrepresentation of the two largest groups of "minority" students is long-standing, dating several decades, and is a serious area of contention. Most debates focus on the efficacy of traditional intelligence tests with…

The results of large-scale international assessments such as Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) have attracted a considerable attention worldwide and are often used by policy-makers to support educational policies. To ensure that the published results represent the actual population, these surveys go through a thorough scrutiny…

In this paper, the author argues that evaluation theory and practice interact insufficiently today, even though early evaluation theorists expected them to be closely intertwined. She views this limited connection as the result of differing interests on the part of theorists and practitioners, differing frequencies of dissemination, and differing…