This paper considers the positionality of a Man of Colour studying Whiteness among male undergraduates, and the methodological challenges this poses. While some have explored the politics of representation when a researcher comes from the socially dominant group or from the same racial group there are almost no explorations of the…

Phenomenography is a research approach that seeks to identify "variation" in experiences of a particular phenomenon among a sample population. It includes particular procedures for writing research questions, designing data collection tools, and analyzing findings. Sustainability in higher education has attracted considerable interest in…

The landscape of childhood health and disease has changed over the past century, and school nurses are now in a unique position to address the conditions that lead to chronic disease, such as obesity. Measuring body mass index (BMI) during childhood and adolescence is the recommended method for screening and/or monitoring obesity in school…

There are pedagogical challenges USA students and instructors face within mixed methods classrooms. Instructors of mixed methods are often self-taught, lacking adequate training in both qualitative and quantitative approaches to research. Students are not often trained in both research approaches. These dual training gaps can result in deep…

Understanding how scientific conclusions are drawn from data is central to learning about the nature of science. Many students struggle with aspects of reasoning from data, including identifying relationships among variables, interpreting graphs, coordinating theory and evidence, and not allowing personal beliefs to outweigh the data when forming…

Intuitive knowledge seems to influence human decision-making outside of consciousness and differs from deliberate cognitive and metacognitive processes. Intuitive knowledge can play an essential role in problem solving and may offer the initiation of subsequent learning processes. Scientific discovery learning with computer simulations leads to…

Science instructors are increasingly incorporating teaching techniques that help students develop core competencies such as critical-thinking and communication skills. These core competencies are pillars of career readiness that prepare undergraduate students to successfully transition to continuing education or the workplace, whatever the field.…

We describe a semester-long project for an introductory statistics class that studies the broken windows theory of policing and the related issues of race, policing, and criminal justice. The most impactful feature of the project is the data-collection phase, in which students attend and observe a public arraignment court session. This "Court…

This article describes a lesson in which high school biology, ecology, environmental science, anatomy, and physiology students can devise hypotheses and test them with scientific data, identify unanswered questions, and design an additional study to answer those questions. This module connects students with exciting research and current science…

Aggregate survey responses collected from students are commonly used by universities to compare effective educational practices across program majors, and to make high-stakes decisions about the effectiveness of programs. Yet if there is too much heterogeneity among student responses within programs, the program-level averages may not…

The development of a student's ability to make data-driven decisions has become a focus in higher education (Schield 1999; Stephenson and Caravello 2007). Data literacy, the ability to understand and use data to effectively inform decisions, is a fundamental component of information competence (Mandinach and Gummer 2013; Stephenson and Caravello,…

This article discusses critical methodological design decisions for collecting, interpreting, and synthesizing empirical evidence during the design, deployment, and operational quality-control phases for automated scoring systems. The discussion is inspired by work on operational large-scale systems for automated essay scoring but many of the…

Understanding and interpreting biased data, decision-making in accordance with the data, and critically evaluating situations involving data are among the fundamental skills necessary in the modern world. To develop these required skills, emphasis on statistical literacy in school mathematics has been gradually increased in recent years. The…

Learning about people from long ago and far away poses a challenge for students because such people seem so distant and different. The lack of easily comprehensible text-based primary sources compounds this problem. Using a built environment as a primary source makes people from the distant past more accessible, concrete and exciting. Broadly…

Education researchers often study count variables, such as times a student reached a goal, discipline referrals, and absences. Most researchers that study these variables use typical regression methods (i.e., ordinary least-squares) either with or without transforming the count variables. In either case, using typical regression for count data can…