Research Findings: This essay offers a review of challenges that university laboratory preschools face in providing a site for research that fits with other components of the program mission. An argument is made to consider paradigm shifts in research questions and methods that move away from traditions within the fields that study children's…

Several approaches to the study of play are examined and critiqued, including Matthews and Matthews' (1982) paradigm case approach and Sutton-Smith and Kelly-Byrne's (1984) view of play as a commonly-recognized-as-framed event in which the metacommunicative function always retains primacy. Consideration of the genesis of play in the child leads to…

This paper addresses neglected questions in item response theory (IRT): measurement of ability or trait parameters and item difficulty in the Rasch model; measurement of individual change based on a Rasch test; and the general framework for detection of differential item functioning under the Mantel-Haenszel procedure. (SLD)

This paper explores a wide range of issues associated with research on mental models. Based on a functional perspective, mental models are defined as the mechanisms whereby humans generate descriptions of system purpose and form, explanations of system functioning and observed system states, and predictions of future system states. Specifically,…

This review of the literature on employer satisfaction with vocational education graduates is based on a search for representative studies with different methodologies and from different sources. Observations made are organized into four basic categories: (1) theoretical considerations in conducting research; (2) methodological considerations in…