This study, which was designed to identify factors contributing to children's construction of temporal relationships, investigated 10-year-olds' thought and understanding of historical time. A total of 10 children 10 years of age were interviewed on videotape and asked to construct a time line of historical events and persons. In interviews,…

A study was conducted to create an instrument for systematically coding qualitative processes of children's cooperative and associative play. Data were gathered through observations of 16 preschool children ranging in age from 47 to 59 months and attending a day care center using the High/Scope Preschool Curriculum Model. A total of 20 hours of…

Critiques the arts program of a black suburban elementary school, praising its emphasis on black artistic heritages and its fostering of racial equality and individual visibility. The school's arts activities interweave personal lives with the aesthetic motive and discourage tendencies toward conformity and docility. Includes 15 references. (MLH)

A diary study, in which observers recorded occurrences of vocal communications of a severely developmentally-delayed six-year-old, provided a scheme for categorizing and analyzing the vocalizations (into such areas as semantic, communicative, and phonological usage) and establishing a pattern of word development and possible interventions. (CB)

A major source of confusion in educational research comes when qualitative research is regarded as if it were one approach. Qualitative research has many varieties that can be identified and understood by using the notion of research traditions. Six approaches from the social and behavioral sciences are compared. (VM)

The study presents a methodology for collecting detailed naturalistic data on preschool teachers' instructions and children's compliance as well as a descriptive analysis of variables related to instruction rate and compliance probability. The study also illustrates the effects of context on teacher and child behavior. (Author/DB)

Shows how qualitative evaluation may be used to analyze outcomes and describe elements of an outdoor experience that made it valuable to women participants. Reports 22 participants in 5-day Womens' Week Program sponsored by Madison (Wisconsin) Girl Scout Council met needs for self-understanding, personal growth, and recreation. (NEC)

Offers a case study of a focus group project involving unstructured, individual and indepth interviews with nontraditional community college students. Explains the theory of qualitative research behind focus groups, reasons for selecting this methodology, the process for conducting focus groups, and ways to deal effectively with atypical focus…

Asserts that qualitative research has great potential for use in gerontological research. Describes QUALOG, a computer-assisted, qualitative data analysis scheme using logic programming developed at Syracuse University. Reviews development of QUALOG and discusses how QUALOG was used to analyze data from a qualitative study of older adult learners.…

Using a naturalistic research design, 22 teachers of secondary students classified as educable mentally retarded were interviewed about their perceptions of their students' feelings, attitudes, knowledge and behaviors related to sexuality. Results indicated that teachers perceived their students as having limited and/or distorted information about…

Reviews research on appropriate methodologies to use in studying native or second language acquisition and points out that both quantitative and qualitative research methods are used in different ways of study in the field. (CB)

Sources for thinking about and doing new paradigm research are reviewed. A variety of nontraditional approaches that address the role of subjectivity and consensus in research are discussed. The effect of personal and social processes on the researcher, including how one's construction of reality depends on the chosen methodology, is emphasized.…

Many evaluation researchers are now attempting to synthesize quantitative and qualitative approaches. Although such efforts appear to carry great promise, some subtleties and incompatibilities of these approaches are perhaps being overlooked. Implications for social inquiry are discussed. (Author/GDC)

Educators and policymakers are increasingly pursuing a broad variety of programs that aim to promote democracy through civic education, service learning, and other pedagogies. Their underlying beliefs, however, differ. For some, a commitment to democracy is associated with liberal notions of freedom, while for others democracy is primarily about…

This chapter discusses difficulties encountered in research on teaching and learning mathematics to illustrate a set of core problems with appropriate uses of video as data. Problems include: (1) processes of collecting video data and making selections from it are usually deleted from research accounts; (2) production values that are preserved in…