This article explores the process of problem framing in research, and considers the ethics of the framing in the context of the author's dual role as a researcher and educator seeking to engender learning amongst partnership stakeholders. In doing so, the author attends to issues of agency in partnership research by providing the situational…

This paper discusses the significance of conducting respectful research within urban schools, using the example of one large-scale university-school board partnership in northwestern Toronto. The authors, three research assistants on the project, use their experiences within three of the participating schools to interrogate the research approach…

The purpose of this article is to examine the authors' experiences while trying to enter and engage local communities in bottom-up literacies through participatory action research (PAR) toward the community's own collective self-development. In trying to enter five different communities, I have found several challenges and roadblocks such as…

The prime purpose of this document on Alberta, Canada's project SEARCH (Selection of Educational Alternatives for Rural Change) was that of acquainting the interested reader with the project. The SEARCH program, which evolved through the felt need to improve rural education, had 2 major objectives: to select and field test promising innovations…

Profound changes taking place in communities and in universities are bringing researchers and community members new opportunities for joint research endeavors and new problems that must be resolved. In such partnerships, questions about shared decision making--about the ethics of collaboration--arise at every stage: Who decides which problems are…

While universities can play a major role in advancing research-based community development, academic discourses of rigor, quality and ethics often conflict with the participatory and collaborative approaches required by community development principles. While experienced academics often have difficulty negotiating these issues, they present…

This paper traces the process of designing and administering a structured survey on dropping out of school to demonstrate the means by which working with organizations and their clients impacts research methodology. A dropout accounting system had been developed for the Ysleta Independent School District, a district with an enrollment of 50,000…

Three network studies in education are reviewed in order to assess the current "state of the art." New directions for developing social network analysis (SNA) in education, based upon experiences from a study of school-community relations in Pontiac, Michigan, are suggested. One concern for the future of SNA stems from the elevation of…

THE STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM FOR VOCATIONAL EDUCATION, THE PURPOSES AND OBJECTIVES, THE PROCEDURES NEEDED TO ACHIEVE THE OBJECTIVES, RESOURCES (LEADERSHIP, INSTITUTIONS, SOURCES OF FUNDS), AND EXPECTED RESULTS ARE OUTLINED FOR 10 PROPOSED RESEARCH STUDIES--(1) "DESIGN FOR CAREER CHOICE," (2) "EARLY IDENTIFICATION AND SELECTION…

If the findings of educational research are to be more intuitively appealing, readily understood, and widely accepted, educational researchers should give better attention to the reduction of needless methodological complexity and to the improvement of conceptual clarity. (Editor)

This article describes and analyzes three images of leadership which are prominent in the literature on effective schools. The ways in which these flawed images have contributed to the impending failure of that movement are discussed. Problems created by these leadership images are examined and solutions are discussed. (JL)

Suggests that social scientists need to move out of the laboratory and study human development in the full complexity of real-world problems, which includes the perspectives of practitioners. Suggests that the social science field needs to accept a problem-focused orientation rather than a discipline-focused one for studying human development to…

Research in Indigenous Australian education is at a dead-end. Researchers are still heading out into the field to look for new knowledge to answer old questions. The same epistemology dominates how we look, and where, while the methodology provides the researcher with a forced choice, one where either the student or the teacher is blamed for the…

Haas criticizes Kannapel et al for conducting their "rural" research with school professionals and asks what it would take for rural schools to engage their communities and what, besides geography, makes a school rural. Kannapel et al claim that community concerns are not limited to rural schools and that advocates of systemic reform and…

A 3-DAY SEMINAR BROUGHT TOGETHER 40 RESEARCH SPECIALISTS IN COMMUNICATIONS, DIRECTORS OF SCHOOL-COMMUNITY RELATIONS, SCHOOL SUPERINTENDENTS, AND PROFESSORS OF EDUCATIONAL ADMINISTRATION. OBJECTIVES OF THE SEMINAR WERE--(1) TO REVIEW AND SYNTHESIZE SOME OF THE OUTSTANDING RESEARCH IN MASS COMMUNICATION MEDIA, (2) TO POINT OUT THE IMPLICATIONS OF…