This special issue marks the 50th anniversary of the landmark Pygmalion experiment (Rosenthal & Jacobson, 1968). It offers contributions from across the globe, attesting to universal features of teacher expectancy effects. Reviews of this history underscore controversy, advances, and few intervention studies. Empirical studies emphasise…

This article offers a rationale for the contributions of qualitative research to evidence-based practice in special education. In it, I make the argument that qualitative research encompasses the ability to study significant problems of practice, engage with practitioners in the conduct of research studies, learn and change processes during a…

Suggests an R&D process which has demonstrated its utility as a means of allowing researchers to communicate more effectively with both users and administrators (or funders). (Author/DAG)

Increasingly, teachers--but also parents and politicians--voice dissatisfaction with the divide they experience between research and practice and the resulting minimal impact of teacher education (Ashton, 1996; Barone, Berliner, Blanchard, Casanova, & McGowan, 1996). The problem seems to be perennial. More than a century ago, John Dewey pointed…

Three major propositions discussed in this article include: (1) There are two major obstacles to research influencing educational practice in the long term. (2) These are the pragmatic-practical notion that research should pay off and that it should be relevant to contemporary social and educational problems. (Author/AM)

Argues that defining "progress" is fundamental to understanding how effective educational research is in improving practice. Discusses the problem of partial specification and its consequences for defining the research-practice relationship. Presents three different, but complementary, approaches to defining "progress":…

The current status of research on the Hispanic Elderly indicates that very little has been written. Most of the published material is dated, unreliable, inconclusive, and scattered throughout the historical and social literature world. To date, research regarding the Hispanic Community is seriously defective both statistically and in its…

Some of the shortcomings of counselling research are discussed and ways in which graduate programs in counselling can reduce the gap between research and practice are given. (CG)

Issues, concerning the utilization, application, and usefulness of educational research, are examined. Also explored are reasons why practitioners do or do not use research findings in their work and how educational research can meet the needs of schools. (CJ)

This paper provides a comprehensive overview of the "state of the art" of communication research in Asia. An analysis of the problems of communication research reveals that growth in the field is slow, due to such factors as lack of professionally trained researchers, absence of financial, human, and physical facilities to support…

Cross cultural psychology is considered as a methodological strategy, as a means of evaluating hypotheses of unicultural origins with evidence of more panhuman relevance, and as a means of developing new theoretical psychological phenomena. (Author)

Educational research occupies a pivotal position as educators move to meet growing social challenges. Educational change must be a logical outcome of systematic, controlled, empirical, and critical investigation. Improvement of research is dependent upon increased interaction of research specialists and vocational educators. Some major…

Educational research has been excessively atheoretical and has not produced an accumulating body of systematically observed empirical facts. Much of the best work has been reductionist, partly because it has been rooted in paradigms of the behavioral sciences and partly because of the fragmentation of the community of professional researchers.…

Concludes that the concerned black scholar should not shy away from empirical research on the psychological affairs of Afro-Americans because of its attendant vulnerability to presuppositions and biases. Instead he should use a presuppositional infrastructure that is heuristically viable and ethnographically sensitive. (Author/AM)

Discusses 3 alternatives for university-based research. (PG)