Refutation texts, rhetorical tools designed to reduce misconceptions, have garnered attention across four decades and many studies. Yet, the ability of a refutation text to change a learner's mind on a topic needs to be qualified and modulated. In this critical review, we bring attention to sources of constraints often overlooked by refutation…

The use of controlled comparisons pervades comparative historical analysis. Heated debates have surrounded the methodological purchase of such comparisons. However, the quality and validity of the conceptual building blocks on which the comparisons are based have largely been ignored. This article discusses a particular problem pertaining to these…

Conducting literature review is a complicated, sometimes confusing and laborious process that beginning educational researchers, especially graduate students, often find challenging. However, in the past these challenges were hardly considered, but in more recent times they have been increasingly considered by various faculties and graduate…

There is unexamined potential for developing and testing rival causal explanations in the type of data that participant observation is best suited to create: descriptions of in situ social interaction crafted from the participants' perspectives. By intensively examining a single ethnography, we can see how multiple predictions can be derived from…

Engagement is one of the most widely misused and overgeneralized constructs found in the educational, learning, instructional, and psychological sciences. The articles in this special issue represent a wide range of traditions and highlight several key conceptual, theoretical, methodological, and analytical issues related to defining and measuring…

"Network" is a fashionable and current term in every field of contemporary society and education is no exception. In this paper, the concept of network (and other associated concepts, such as partnership and collaboration) is reviewed. Such revision regards selected theoretical contributions and is explored in terms of the use of the…

This paper describes theory-led design as a way of developing novel tools for learning analytics (LA). It focuses upon the domain of automated discourse analysis (ADA) of group learning activities to help an instructor to orchestrate online groups in real-time. The paper outlines the literature on the development of LA tools within the domain of…

Rapid migration shifts, anti-immigrant discourses in the public sphere, and harsh immigration policies have posed daunting challenges for immigrant students, their families, their teachers, and their communities in the 21st century. Trends in public discourse and law enforcement in the United States mirror developments in European countries with…

This article critically analyses how empirical research investigating quality early childhood education and care (ECEC) in the period 1980-2008 has conceptualised "quality". Applying Foucault's notion of "critique" to 338 peer-reviewed journal articles uncovered six interconnected truths: quality is an objective reality; quality enhances…

This article explores the deployment of triangulation in the service of uncovering subjugated knowledge and promoting social change for women and other oppressed groups. Feminist approaches to mixed methods praxis create a tight link between the research problem and the research design. An analysis of selected case studies of feminist praxis…

Argues that the use of the concept of youth culture has become unproductive in the development of an adequate sociology of youth. This is based on the contention that the concept is ambiguously related to the sociological concept of subculture under which it is supposed to be subsumed. (Author/AM)

This paper shows that so-called "threshold concepts" have been defined in a way that makes it impossible, even in principle, to empirically isolate them. It continues by proposing an alternative theoretical framework, and argues: (1) that concepts are not reducible to abilities; (2) that acquisition of a given concept can be necessary, but not…

Responds to a number of recent criticisms of labeling theory made by those who criticize it for its empathy with deviants, and Marxists who criticize it for ignoring oppression and exploitation. Conceptual problems of defining what is deviance and who is a deviant are discussed. (Author/AM)

Discusses basic weaknesses and limitations of models, simulations, gaming, and other analytical and behavioral approaches to simplifying reality for understanding. The development and use of scenarios and the model builder's basic conceptions of the aspects of reality being analyzed are described for a one-person, computer-interactive, quasi-rigid…

Two studies attempted to clarify the Intellectual Tasks test assessment of number conservation by testing for two possible artifacts due to procedure: (1) Effects of preceding questions on the following test questions, and (2) operations or manipulations of the test materials by the examiner. Forty Mexican-American first and second graders were…