The overarching argument made in this article is twofold. Firstly, academic conferences are posited as sites for higher education research. Secondly, the well-recognised emotional and social processes of conferences are used to make space at the boundaries of higher education research for psychosocial analysis. The article theorises conferences in…

After the 1973 coup, Chile swung from a centralized state to a dictatorial decentralized one where education turned from a public to a private good. Since the 1990 restoration of democracy, market-based trends have endured, involving the fomentation of a knowledge society, one where everyone is always studying. The present study, drawn from an…

In 2012, a new assessment and rating process for Australian early childhood education and care (ECEC) services was introduced, using a new National Quality Standard (NQS). The NQS assessment and rating process has similarities to observational assessment systems used in educational research, and involves similar strategies for upholding…

Postgraduate taught education in universities is under-researched compared to research on undergraduate learning and teaching. This results in two missed opportunities: making evidence-informed improvements to postgraduate taught education and integrating such improvements into thinking and practice. A commitment to evidence-informed improvement…

In many countries, policy makers struggle with the development of value-added indicators of school performance for educational accountability purposes and in particular with the choice whether school context measured in the form of student composition variables should be included. This study investigates differences between 7 empirical studies…

This article provides a short background on Demos, a public policy organization that works on issues of political and economic inequality. Demos views community colleges as a linchpin in the American higher education system, and it has worked over several years to research ways to increase state support for higher education and direct support…

Building upon a recent call to renew actor-network theory (ANT) for educational research, this article reconsiders relations between technology and educational theory. Taking cues from actor-network theorists, this discussion considers the technologically-mediated networks in which learning actors are situated, acted upon, and acting, and traces…

The status of educational technology research in a VUCA world is examined. The acronym, VUCA, stands for "Volatility" (rapidly changing contexts and conditions), "Uncertainty" (information missing that is critical to problem solving), "Complexity" (multiple factors difficult to categorize or control), and…

The purpose of this literature review is to systematically examine policy and practice intervention research and assess the impact of those interventions on high school dropout and school completion rates. This systematic review extends the literature by (a) describing both policy and practice interventions, (b) synthesizing findings from…

Active academics whose careers span several decades have witnessed a changing landscape for disseminating their research and scholarship. As technology changes, the ability to share research increases exponentially, and the choice of outlets becomes more intricate. This article discusses the role of scholarship in the lives of seasoned college…

The role of analogies and metaphors has played a significant part in the work on teaching and learning science. This commentary discusses three papers from this current issue that cover a wide range of studies in the spirit of conceptual metaphors--ranging from a study somewhat similar to "classical" conceptual change, to a teacher…

Hundreds of articles have been published on the topics of teaching and learning recursion, yet fewer than 50 of them have published research results. This article surveys the computing education research literature and presents findings on challenges students encounter in learning recursion, mental models students develop as they learn recursion,…

This response to Perna et al. provides an alternate approach to research on massive open online courses (MOOCs). We argue that a student-centered, theory-driven conceptualization and methodological approaches allow us to move beyond descriptive statistics and into a deeper understanding of MOOC learners. Examples using a teacher development MOOC…

Securing funding for undergraduate research activities is critical to a vibrant program. Strategies for obtaining funding are described in this chapter.

The purpose of this article is to help education practitioners and researchers understand that research about rural education is complicated not only by issues of defining "rural," but also by the often dramatic ways that rural schools differ from each other. We briefly address issues in defining rural and describe rural classification…