The goal of this study is to explore new tools for analyzing scientific sense-making in out-of-school settings. Although such measures are now common in science classroom research, dialogically based methodological approaches are relatively new to informal learning research. Such out-of-classroom settings have more recently become a breeding…

Qualitative researchers often describe the ambiguities and complexities of extracting meaning from ambiguous and complex data. Although methodological literature provides useful frameworks and heuristics to guide the process of transforming field data into credible findings, learning to analyze and interpret qualitative data also involves a…

Most investigations into the effects of funding changes on higher education systems have been carried out in developed economies. This article focuses on the Thai higher education system, applying theoretical arguments and empirical analyses to the case of a newly industrialising country. One goal of the Thai higher education funding reform is to…

Background: Research on Sport Education (SE) has shown the curriculum model to be effective in motivating students to undertake specific role responsibilities and engage in the student-led tasks of the curriculum. Despite this level of engagement, emerging evidence suggests that student leadership within the peer teaching tasks of the curriculum…

During the 2006 Spring semester, student affairs administrators at West Virginia University called on all student affairs units to develop assessment plans that focused on student learning. Student affairs units were required to begin their assessment plans by selecting at least one learning outcome to measure. The Assessment Council, ten…

While peer review is a common practice in college composition courses, there is little consistency in approach and effectiveness within the field, owing in part to the dearth of empirical research that investigates peer-review processes. This study is designed to shed light on what a peer reviewer actually reads and attends to while providing…

Teacher leaders assume a wide range of roles to support school and student success. Harrison and Killion describe 10 roles that teacher leaders can fulfill in their schools. As resource providers, they provide materials to help their colleagues. Instructional specialists help colleagues with instructional strategies, and curriculum specialists…

Communicating data without some measure of their precision can lead to misinterpretation and incorrect inferences. Several conventions for displaying error along with the data they modify are described and illustrated. Alternatives are offered that seem to provide improvements in the effective communication of error as well as increasing their…

Model-based methods for estimating the population mean in stratified clustered sampling are described. The importance of adjusting the weights is assessed by an approach considering the sampling variation of the adjusted weights and its (variance) components. The resulting estimators are more efficient than the jackknife estimators for a variety…

This generic science education study demonstrates the contrast of findings obtained through analyzing all the raw data as opposed to removing various combinations of identified potential outliers provided through the application of six diagnostic procedures. Outliers are defined as extreme data points with large residuals. It is argued that an…

Randomization tests have been suggested as a method for analyzing the data from single-case designs. This paper explores three concerns which have arisen: the nonresponsive nature of randomization tests, the appropriateness of specific test statistics and the power of these tests. An example is given to illustrate how partial control can be given…

A study examined the question of what sequence patterns, if any, of covering oral interpretation topics emerge from forensic coaching sessions. To answer the question it was first necessary to analyze the process used by the coaches. Process was defined as the action of passing through continuing development from a beginning to a contemplated end.…

In 1987, the Arizona legislature began a process of establishing statewide goals for the improvement of the state's educational system. A joint legislative committee developed specific goals in the areas of student achievement, high school graduation rate, and postschool employment and college enrollment. To produce the baseline data necessary in…

The N=1 analysis differs from a typical analysis of variance in that there is no within-cell error term. Thus interaction terms are used as estimates of error variance. If the interaction term in question represents a significant interaction, the F tests will be conservative. Tukey's test for nonadditivity will detect a common form of interaction.…

To examine the ability of the correction factor epsilon to counteract statistical bias in univariate analysis, an analysis of variance (adjusted by epsilon) and a multivariate analysis of variance were performed on the same data. The results indicated that univariate analysis is a fully protected design when used with epsilon. (JMB)