Educational games have become the lightning rod for learning and preparing a future skilled workforce. Both the people, who argue against and for games agree that learning is possible, but what is learned is another issue. However, the claims about games for learning lacks substantial research and for the most part remains merely philosophical…

Most research in the area of higher education is plagued by the problem of endogeneity or self-selection bias. Unlike ordinary least squares (OLS) regression, propensity score matching addresses the issue of self-selection bias and allows for a decomposition of treatment effects on outcomes. Using panel data from a national survey of bachelor's…

Conducting collaborative fieldwork between American researchers and foreign scholars in developing countries is a difficult prospect for political scientists. Yet, we can use our knowledge and position at an American university to contribute to the academic community in our areas of study and establish lasting personal and institutional ties with…

This paper provides a critical analysis of New Zealand's Performance Based Research Fund (PBRF). The first section sketches the development and implementation of the PBRF. The second section evaluates the scheme, concentrating on three themes: the relationship between privatization, competition and research performance; the standardization of…

This volume of transformed research utilizes an activist approach to examine the notion that nothing is apolitical. Research projects themselves are critically examined for power orientations, even as they are used to address curricular problems and educational or societal issues. Philosophical perspectives that have facilitated an understanding…

One strategy to prevent confusion as new paradigms emerge is to have professionals in the area develop and use a standard model of the phenomenon in question. The development and use of standard models in physics, genetics, archaeology, and cosmology have been very productive. The cognitive revolution in psychology and education has produced a…

In this paper, a panel of four new faculty discuss the challenges they have faced and the lessons they have learned in attempting to create a research agenda for themselves. To provide a point of reference, brief biographical sketches are provided of the panel members and the responder. The panelists' comments are provided on several principal…

Failure to separate judicial reasoning (the application of rules) from legislative reasoning (the justification of rules) in earlier studies is claimed to invalidate most previous developmental research using moral dilemma interviews. Two studies used a novel method of scoring moral dilemma interviews that separates judicial from legislative…

This consideration of validity issues in self-study research argues that issues of validity in such research are first and foremost moral arguments about educational practice. The arguments point to narrative study because versions of narrative work are considered a necessary component of self-study. Narrative research has been criticized on…

This study compared the formation of the names of Victorian women writers in the Library of Congress name authority file to the formation of names in selected bibliographic tools created by humanities scholars. A purposive sample of 52 writers, divided into 12 problem categories derived from Chapter 22 of the "Anglo-American Cataloguing…

In the early 1980s, Shakeshaft and Hanson reviewed the 10 volumes of "Educational Administration Quarterly" (EAQ) that were published during the 1970s for evidence of androcentric bias. Androcentric bias is said to occur when the theory and research is informed by the male perspective. The underlying assumption is that the experience of…

A test of statistical significance is a procedure for determining how likely a result is assuming a null hypothesis to be true with randomization and a sample of size n (the given size in the study). Randomization, which refers to random sampling and random assignment, is important because it ensures the independence of observations, but it does…

This guide is designed to assist adult educators who are also first-time practitioner-researchers. It is organized in three parts. Part 1 is an introduction to practitioner research. The following steps of designing and conducting a research project are examined in a section on strategies and methods: identify a research question, collect data,…

Experts on distance education in developing countries were asked their opinions regarding the availability of research information, areas in which research efforts should be concentrated, and the order of priority to be given to various research areas in distance education. Five-page questionnaires were mailed to 90 randomly selected members of…

This paper provides a general overview of the type of problems encountered in the field of research so that individuals who are contemplating conducting research in an underdeveloped country for the first time are better prepared, and hence, better able to complete their research. The paper recounts a female researcher's personal experiences in…