This chapter focuses on theories and methods for policy studies in higher education, in an era of accelerating globalisation. Policy is increasingly conceived as a complex process which extends from global to local levels, and is contested at all levels. At the same time, higher education has assumed a more central role in the development of a…

"Master" and "apprentice" are terms more commonly coined than explained in the literature focused on instrumental teaching and learning. This theoretical paper explores apprenticeship as a way of understanding the practice of studio-based instruction, beginning with a brief historical overview, and going on to examine the…

The goal of staff development in higher education is a change in teacher practices to positively influence student learning. In other words, the goal of staff development is the transfer of learning to the workplace. Research illuminates that this transfer of learning to the workplace is a complex issue. To make an accurate assessment of staff…

School-university research networks aim at closer integration of research and practice by means of teacher research. Such practice-oriented research can benefit both schools and universities. This paper reports on a multiple-case study of five participants in a school-university research network in a Dutch master's program. The research question…

In research textbooks, and much of the research practice, they describe, qualitative processes and interpretivist epistemologies tend to dominate visual methodology. This article challenges the assumptions behind this dominance. Using exemplification from three existing visual data sets produced through one large education research project, this…

The case for the notion of action learning research has been posed and explored in several publications over the past few years. There is no tradition within action learning of understanding it as an approach to research. Within some academic circles, there has been a focus on the "action turn," the development of the notion of actionable…

The paper begins by arguing that knowledge-blindness in educational research represents a serious obstacle to understanding knowledge-building. It then offers sociological concepts from Legitimation Code Theory--"semantic gravity" and "semantic density"--that systematically conceptualize one set of organizing principles underlying knowledge…

The only available English translation of Makiguchi Tsunesaburo's most characteristic work, "Soka Kyoikugaku Taikei" ("The System of Value-Creating Pedagogy"; 1930-1934), was published as "Education for Creative Living" in 1989 with Alfred Birnbaum as the translator and Dayle M. Bethel as the editor. "Education for Creative Living", not…

This paper explores and examines the distal and proximal systems which construct social science postgraduate study in the UK and analyses the emergent identities of postgraduate students as they negotiate the multiple and interacting practices in their transition to study. The data represent part of a one-year research project, funded by the…

"Doors to Discovery"]TM] is a preschool literacy curriculum that uses eight thematic units of activities to help children build fundamental early literacy skills in oral language, phonological awareness, concepts of print, alphabet knowledge, writing, and comprehension. The eight thematic units cover topics such as nature, friendship,…

The complex field of education is often depicted as a static field governed by technocratic approaches to activities that characterise the field. Education change is equally viewed in such limited and positivistic ways and linear means-end processes (Hoban 2002). In such orientations to the field, educational research therefore, is about finding…

The starting point for this article is a film about Scottish education, "Children's Story". "Children's Story" was one of a group of seven documentaries made for the 1938 British Empire Exhibition in Glasgow, under the supervision of John Grierson. The film was an official entry into the Exhibition and is a formal display of…

Background/Context: This essay is part of a special issue that emerges from a year-long faculty seminar at Teachers College, Columbia University. The seminar's purpose has been to examine in fresh terms the nexus of globalization, education, and citizenship. Participants come from diverse fields of research and practice, among them art education,…

In recent attempts to address the notion of teacher identity, scholars have stressed how identity is dynamically evolving, intrinsically related to others, and consists of multiple identities. Though these postmodern characterizations represent radically new perceptions of identity, they are not extensively discussed in relation to previous…

Background/Context: Scholars in disability studies in education, like scholars in other critical fields of inquiry, increasingly draw on a more interdisciplinary range of texts in their research and teaching, including art, fiction, film, and autobiography. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: The author asserts that contemporary…