Research apprenticeships for secondary students provide authentic contexts for learning science in which students engage in scientific investigations with practicing scientists in working laboratory groups. Student experiences in these research apprenticeships vary depending on the individual nature of the laboratory in which students have been…

Purpose: This paper aims to present the process evaluation for a two-year (2008-2010) participatory action research project focusing on home-school partnership in health learning, undertaken within the Schools for Health in Europe (SHE) in Eastern Finland. Design/methodology/approach: Two intervention schools and two control schools (grade 5…

This research project aims to investigate how students in lower secondary school experience work with socioscientific issues (SSI). The six socioscientific cases developed and used in this project are relevant according to characteristics of SSI and to the national curriculum. Approximately 1,500 students in Sweden have worked with one SSI case…

"Reasoning and sense making should occur in every classroom every day," states "Focus in High School Mathematics: Reasoning and Sense Making" (NCTM 2009, p. 5). As this book suggests, reasoning can take many forms, including explorations and conjectures as well as explanations and justifications of student thinking. Sense making, on the other…

This article focuses on the methodological use of reflective narratives from discourses and activities of an experienced primary teacher as evidence of her professional identity. The teacher's reflective narratives emerge from her participation in a 3-year developmental and research project, Learning Communities in Mathematics, conducted at the…

The aim of this work is to explore recent research in the field of leadership as related to education and to link such research to a possible research project. This research project would focus on increasing standardized test scores in California schools focusing on the elementary school level through focusing on increasing reading competency and…

Federally sponsored research funding sources are not stagnant programs. Many things influence the nature of research, not all of them purely scientific. Historically significant events draw public attention to causes, and in the age of immediate information those events can have a powerful and lasting impact on research funding. September 11, 2001…

Conventional lecture approaches view the process as a teacher-led method of imparting knowledge ("presentation" lecture), whereas modern theories suggest that the teaching methods employed should aim to inspire the student to learn rather than simply provide them with knowledge ("performance" lecture). The aim of the current…

This article examines the importance of context in evaluative inquiry. Following guidelines from real-world and utilization-focused evaluation frameworks, four projects are described to illustrate one foundation's pragmatic approach to evaluation that values collaboration, methodological appropriateness, and utilization. The authors contend that…

The dual nature of the self has been a core concern of social psychology since its inception. We contribute to this longstanding tradition of inquiry by focusing on two lines of research within the expectation states theoretical research program: (1) the study of second-order expectations and (2) research on the durability of expectations. We…

This paper analyses one aspect of a pan-African action research project called ITMUA (Implementing the Third Mission of Universities in Africa). This particular paper draws on the data from that project to explore the National University of Lesotho's contribution to lifelong learning in its communities. It provides background information on the…

In this paper I argue that when a researcher is a research instrument, it is likely that the researcher would develop a heightened awareness of his/her own cultural conditioning, especially in the case of cross-cultural studies. And that such awareness would make him/her realise that one's own cultural background may indeed have an influence on…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to expand the understanding of outcomes of service-learning/community engagement. The current study explored the efficacy of service-learning as a pedagogical tool to support content mastery by undergraduates in a management class. Design/methodology/approach: The study involved a classroom experiment with 120…

This article presents a model of teacher research supported by academic partners to develop a better understanding of the barriers to education faced by young people growing up in poverty. It critiques politicians' demands for teachers to "close the gap" for ignoring the cumulative intergenerational effects of deprivation. The authors…

The present study describes student learning and personal outcomes associated with learning research methods in introductory psychology, via one of two semester-long projects: one involving performing naturalistic observation of the behavior of community members, and the other involving performing a 60-minute interview of local veterans regarding…