General extrinsic and intrinsic forces pressing for change in schools are examined, and specific attention is paid to five problem areas that illustrate the complexity of issues facing those who wish to study or facilitate educational change. Extrinsic pressure arises from ongoing societal change in the face of a dichotomy between educational…

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…

Provided are explanations of how research works, different approaches to research (naturalistic observation, correctional analysis, the experiment method, the theoretic and compendium approaches), and some of the problems inherent in research methodology in an attempt to encourage practitioners in the field of blindness to use and engage in…

Proposes that there be more direct carryover of what has been learned about measurement in research to measurement in teaching (specifically, grading). Major sources of error in the measurement process are identified, and seven tested social science research strategies are presented. Suggests that to the extent measurement is varied and repeated,…

Managerial style has implications for program evaluators who wish teir work to be utilized in the decision-making process. This article characterizes managerial behavior in general, and draws some inferences as to how utilization would proceed and how it might be increased. (Author/CTM)

Recent regulations concerning consent procedures and protection of privacy fall most severely on follow-up studies of children. Compliance with current regulations on subjects' rights sometimes seems potentially more harmful to the subjects than is the research itself. (Author/AM)

Examines what it means when youngsters tell researchers they are concerned about the nuclear arms race. The nuclear concerns picked up in surveys may be deep or they may indicate a superficial awareness of a hot political topic. (JN)

Reviews research concerned with eye movement training in the classroom and points out how specific research has been interpreted and applied incorrectly. (FL)

Researchers from 18 different countries as well as representatives of UNICEF and UNESCO attended a conference on international perspectives in child development and social policy. Topics discussed included knowledge and ideology, goals of different social groups, communication problems, and the relationship of research to practice. Bibliographic…

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.…

Ethnography has raised various issues for the educational research manager (the person responsible for directing a large-scale research and/or evaluation project). These include selection and management of ethnographers, negotiation of ethnographers' onsite roles, communication and coordination of ethnographers, and ethnographic data processing…

Investigates the claims of scientific objectivity that support recent changes in policies toward early-literacy instruction in the states of Texas and California. Uses a framework to assess the validity of this claim through the analysis of 10 major studies of phonological awareness. Finds the two states' curricular policy statements to be highly…

Three factors are considered that contribute to the perception that the higher education research effort has done a poor job in dealing with problems confronting academe. The first factor is the magnitude of the higher education enterprise and the number of problems and issues inherent in it. The second factor is the level of support for research,…

This paper presents a historical overview of the use of action research in education and describes the basic assumptions and expectations that continue to characterize collaborative research projects today. Action research was initiated in the 1930's by Kurt Lewin and adapted by educators in the 1940's. Interest in action research declined between…

Modern reading theories that are concerned with the reading process of either mature or immature readers show no clearcut concern with unit size. The various graphic units that are encountered by the reader include letters, graphemes, clusters (such as blends), syllables, phonograms, affixes and roots, words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs,…