Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to reflect on some of the professional and practical challenges which emerged during the process of carrying out a small-scale action research project into different approaches to teaching English Literature in a Year-9 secondary classroom, completed in part-fulfilment of the requirements for a higher degree.…

The three rejoinders that follow engage ideas in Amy Azano's critique (q.v.) (see ERIC Document: EJ1048750) of the study of dissertations with a dual focus on rural education and curriculum and instruction (C&I). Considering the issues Amy raises about authors and authority, the allusion to Luigi Pirandello's great twentieth century…

People who can provide or deny access to research participants are known as 'gatekeepers'. In my 30 years as a researcher, I have learned that gatekeepers have a variety of motivations and strategies to block (or facilitate) research. This case describes several research projects where gatekeepers have played a pivotal role, and what I have…

Teachers' beliefs towards educational research has become one significant factor in explaining the gap between research and practice. The present study aimed at reviewing the scale to measure teachers' beliefs about the causes and problems related to research-based practices, describing beliefs that teachers appear to hold, and examining its…

The fact that many sub-populations do not take part in research, especially participants from lower socioeconomic (SES) backgrounds, is a serious problem in education research. To increase the participation of such groups we must discover what social, economic and practical factors prevent participation, and how to overcome these barriers. In the…

Becker (1967) poses the question "Whose side are we on?," a question which has become an enduring part of discussions within social scientific methodology. This paper explores the key issues in Becker's argument and considers its relevance to researchers today, locating this within a consideration of evaluation-based research and policy.…

Traditions of statistical significance testing in second language (L2) quantitative research are strongly entrenched in how researchers design studies, select analyses, and interpret results. However, statistical significance tests using "p" values are commonly misinterpreted by researchers, reviewers, readers, and others, leading to…

This review of research investigates how the field of social studies education conceptualizes emotions within its literature. Analysis indicates a lack of theoretical and empirical engagement with emotions, even when the presence of emotions is explicitly acknowledged. Drawing on Michalinos Zembylas's framework for researching emotions in…

Conducting intervention studies with homeless populations can be difficult, particularly in terms of retaining participants across multiple sessions and locating them for subsequent follow-up assessments. Homeless youth are even more challenging to engage due to substance use, mental health problems, wariness of authority figures, and frequent…

In this paper, four critical friends meet to discuss qualitative research practices. Together they put one of their own case studies under the knife and deconstruct it to investigate the possibilities that knowledge work is complicated not only by the dynamics of socially constructed enterprises and the actors involved therein, but by the…

Background: The Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) is an independent charity that was established in 2011 with the explicit aim of breaking the link between family income and educational achievement in England. Over the seven years since its inception, EEF has contributed to the existing evidence base by funding over one hundred randomised…

This publication seeks to consider statistics education in Japan while referencing a student paper. The paper to be considered is as follows: "Gakusei no Koudou ga Gakusei Seikatsu Manzokudo ni Ataeru Eikyou" (The Influence of Student Behavior on the Degree of Satisfaction Perceived in Student Life).

The development in information science has enabled an explosive growth of data, which attracts more and more researchers to engage in the field of big data analytics. Noticeably, in many real-world applications, large amounts of data are imbalanced data since the events of interests occur infrequently. Classification of imbalanced data is an…

This article reports on the role and value of social reflexivity in collaborative research in contexts of extreme inequality. Social reflexivity mediates the enablements and constraints generated by the internal and external contextual conditions impinging on the research collaboration. It fosters the ability of participants in a collaborative…

Although social scientists devote considerable effort to mitigating measurement error during data collection, they often ignore the issue during data analysis. And although many statistical methods have been proposed for reducing measurement error-induced biases, few have been widely used because of implausible assumptions, high levels of model…