Campuses across the country are being asked to respond to a host of challenges: technology, diverse and changing populations, competition, financial stress, and globalization to name a few. Yet, in most instances, campus decision-making mechanisms are not prepared to handle these increasingly complex issues. In addition, traditional conceptions of…

This paper unfolds through the eating, speaking mouths of online learners and teachers and theorists as a way of exploring the educative potential of holding in tension the ambiguous virtues of the body and the (no)body in formal and informal electronic learning environments. Online learning research commonly devalues the body and takes the body…

To determine what attracts faculty to rural community colleges, a qualitative study based on the theory of met expectations was conducted. The faculty members who expressed satisfaction were those who were comfortable living and working in a rural community, enjoyed the challenge of teaching students who varied considerably in their readiness for…

The purpose of this article is to illustrate a mixed-method approach (i.e., combining qualitative and quantitative methods) for advancing the study of construct validation in cross-cultural research. The article offers a detailed illustration of the approach using the responses 612 Sri Lankan adolescents provided to an ethnographic survey. Such…

Standard-setting research has relied very heavily on certain types of information that, although helpful, may be inadequate for judging the quality of standard-setting results. To increase confidence in standard-setting results, the measurement community must understand far more about the panelists' task and about the factors that influence their…

This article provides an overview of how qualitative research methods (QRMs) can augment the literature in child and adolescent clinical psychology by contributing to theory and hypothesis building. We discuss the utility of qualitative methods in examining the nature of clinical processes and obtaining deeper understandings about quantitative…

In this essay, the author considers the goals and uses of ethnography and qualitative inquiry in higher educational research as they are limited by commitments to verifying data and representing the "real" and argue for broader understandings of the practice and uses of such research. In particular, the author is concerned that the field's…

Thomas Kuhn developed the construct of research paradigms to make sense of the history of conceptual change in the physical sciences. The construct has since been appropriated by a number of academic fields and by non-academics as well. This paper traces the use of the construct in the educational research field. The bulk of the paper is organized…

This qualitative study describes and evaluates a pedagogical procedure that allows multicultural college freshmen to devise and research topics indigenous to their communal backgrounds. The researcher wishes to ascertain whether a method delineated by an academic procedure and limited to a classroom setting can have extended social implications…

Purpose: To report on a case study that examines how the Learning Organisation (LO) concept can be applied in a Singapore school and the challenges that the school faces in the process. Design/methodology/approach: A qualitative research inquiry was adopted using ethnographic methods. Data includes in-depth face-to-face interviews, observation of…

Criminologists have long recognized that retaliatory violence diffuses outward from discrete conflicts, often in contagion-like fashion. No understanding of the source of this spread is possible without first documenting the modalities that fuel it. Retaliation has variation, and it is important to catalog that variation if the concept of crime as…

Concept mapping has been widely used as one of the most efficient methods of revealing the cognitive structure of an individual on any concept. There are not only different concept mapping techniques but also different ways of analysis. It has been suggested that concept maps provide valuable and rich information which becomes disoriented when…

The use of qualitative methods is increasing in the health education literature, and there is need for more information on these methods and their use. This investigation looks at qualitative sampling practices as reported in the 93 qualitative or mixed-method studies published in Health Education & Behavior from 1980 to 2000. It focuses…

This paper presents Dialectical Inquiry (DI) as a structured qualitative research method for studying participant models of organizational processes. The method is applied to rich secondary anecdotal data on technology transfer, gathered by subject-matter experts in a large firm. DI assumes that the imposition of a dialectical structure will…

This paper discusses grounded theory as one of the qualitative research designs. It describes how grounded theory generates from data. Three phases of grounded theory--open coding, axial coding, and selective coding--are discussed, along with some of the issues which are the source of debate among grounded theorists, especially between its…