The assessment of student learning outcomes in the tertiary school sector has seen an increase in global popularity in recent years. Measurement instruments that target higher order skills are on the rise, whereas assessments that foster the recall of factual knowledge are declining. The Assessment of Higher Education Learning Outcomes (AHELO)…

In psychology, there has been a growing interest in mixed methods approaches, however, only a minority of published research explicitly use this methodology. This study aimed to explore the full range of attitudes toward mixed methods research in psychology held by students and academics, using the model of attitudes by Eagly and Chaiken as a…

Our article introduces the "Journal of Educational Data Mining's" Special Issue on Educational Data Mining on Motivation, Metacognition, and Self-Regulated Learning. We outline general research challenges for data mining researchers who conduct investigations in these areas, the potential of EDM to advance research in this area, and…

This review paper begins by asking what makes few schools outstanding. What makes them successful? What have we learned from last two decades of studying School Effectiveness (SE)? To answer those questions, this paper attempts to identify the patterns and trends of Studying School effectiveness from western perspective. The main purpose of this…

This paper aims to explore and develop a theoretical approach for children's rights research in education formed through an encounter between the sociology of childhood and John Dewey's educational theory. The interest is mainly methodological, in the sense that the primary ambition of the investigation is to suggest a fruitful and useful…

This case provides an account of the use of the repertory grid interview technique as one aspect of my PhD study. The doctoral thesis documented the development of a holistic approach to redesign an introductory programming course to enhance learning and teaching of object-oriented programming to novices. Starting with the premise that it is not…

Professional biography research with those who hold formal positions in educational organizations is an established approach to researching leaders, leading and leadership. A key focus is on the oral account of a life story, and this can include family and wider life experiences. What is less of a feature is how the respondent codifies their…

The author raises questions about ethnographic methodology through exploring the implications of using observations produced by his colleagues about his office as data for his research. This process blurred the boundaries between researcher, method and the object and subject of research. It meets some criteria for ethnography and not others, and…

In this commentary of "Evaluating the Gifted Program of an Urban School District Using a Modified Regression Discontinuity Design" by Davis, Engberg, Epple, Sieg, and Zimmer, we examine the background of the study, critique the methods used, and discuss the results and implications. The study used a fuzzy regression discontinuity design…

This is an exploration of methodological debates related to ethnographic research. Reflection on conducting research on school choice in an Australian regional centre is the beginning point for a discussion of what Appadurai describes as a dialectical relationship between the neighbourhood and its capacity to exist and reshape itself in relation…

School choice programs continue to be controversial, spurring a number of researchers into evaluating them. When possible, researchers evaluate the effect of attending a school of choice using randomized designs to eliminate possible selection bias. Randomized designs are often thought of as the gold standard for research, but many circumstances…

This paper describes two researchers engagement with two teachers as they taught a middle grades mathematics course, Current Events Math, in a large urban school district. The researchers share bits of data and their ethical entanglements as they entered into the site to find the truth about what works in middle grades mathematics classrooms only…

The report of the national response to intervention (RTI) evaluation study, conducted during 2011-2012, was released in November 2015. Anyone who has read the lengthy report can attest to its complexity and the design used in the study. Both these factors can influence the interpretation of the results from this evaluation. In this commentary, we…

This paper discusses reasons why manuscripts are not accepted for publication in "Ethiopian Journal of Education" ("EJE"). It intends to promote publication by domestic and/or international authors in "EJE" by analyzing the reasons for rejection of manuscripts. To gather the relevant data, a total of 101 rejected…

Researchers are frequently confronted with unanswered questions or items on their questionnaires and tests, due to factors such as item difficulty, lack of testing time, or participant distraction. This paper first presents results from a poll confirming previous claims (Rietveld & van Hout, 2006; Schafer & Graham, 2002) that data…