My PhD research asks why UK high school mathematics teachers who probably love mathematics do not always fully share this with their students. Currently, I am completing my data collection at the end of my second PhD year. I think that researching this might inform new teachers and classroom practice. There is research in mathematics education…

This article draws from a 23-month ethnographic study conducted in mixed-status Mexican homes to detail the particular methodological concerns that arise when conducting research within these legally complex and vulnerable families. Specifically, the analysis illustrates when and why undocumented parents in one focal family asked the ethnographer…

In this article, I provide a conceptually oriented overview of Bayesian approaches to statistical inference and contrast them with frequentist approaches that currently dominate conventional practice in educational research. The features and advantages of Bayesian approaches are illustrated with examples spanning several statistical modeling…

Critically examining common statistical approaches and their strengths and weaknesses is an important step in advancing recreation and leisure sciences. To continue this critical examination and to inform methodological decision making, this study compared three approaches to determine how alternative approaches may result in contradictory…

We examine the performance of planned missing (PM) designs for correlated latent growth curve models. Using simulated data from a model where latent growth curves are fitted to two constructs over five time points, we apply three kinds of planned missingness. The first is item-level planned missingness using a three-form design at each wave such…

In 2003, I began a doctoral research case study of the role of collaborative early intervention teachers as change agents implementing differentiated instruction in an intermediate school setting. Previous studies had focused largely on change theory in general, change in schools, early intervention programs, collaboration, or differentiated…

Video-stimulated verbal recall is becoming an increasingly popular method for examining a broad range of research topics across academic disciplines. One of its major appeals is that it makes it possible to capture and investigate the dynamic nature of task performance and has the potential to provide a wealth of information on the cognitive…

In the current article, we consider the influential position of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and discuss several methodological areas that demonstrate the need for caution when using and interpreting PISA results. We motivate our argument by briefly describing the program's increased influence in educational policy…

University researchers face a significant obstacle when studying schools: their lives as researchers began in schools. How can researchers enter the contemporary high school and see the movement of bodies through those halls as something other than a confirmation or rejection of their own schooling experiences? What special intellectual and…

Multilevel models are often used to evaluate hypotheses about relations among constructs when data are nested within clusters (Raudenbush & Bryk, 2002), although alternative approaches are available when analyzing nested data (Binder & Roberts, 2003; Sterba, 2009). The overarching goal of this article is to suggest when it is appropriate…

Research that elucidates the complexities of gender balance is itself a controversial field. This article examines challenges and limitations in quantitative as well as qualitative research on gender balance in early childhood education and care (ECEC). Cross country comparisons of male and female participation in the ECEC workforce are often…

Hybrid communities using online and face-to-face communications to construct their practices are increasingly part of everyday life amongst people who have easy access to the internet. Researching these communities raises a number of challenges for researchers in the pursuit of ethical research. The paper begins by exploring what is understood by…

Previous research presented in this journal and elsewhere has suggested that vocational education is highly gender segregated and it is the heavy industrial sectors such as industry, vehicle and construction programmes that mainly attract boys with an anti-school attitude who are not interested in academic school work. However, there are good…

Determining how learners use MOOCs effectively is critical to providing feedback to instructors, schools, and policy-makers on this highly scalable technology. However, drawing inferences about student learning outcomes in MOOCs has proven to be quite difficult due to large amounts of missing data (of various kinds) and to the diverse population…

Psychologists studying problem solving have, for over 100 years, been interested in the question of whether there are two different modes of solving problems. One mode--problem solving based on analysis--depends on application of past experience to the problem at hand and proceeds incrementally toward solution. The second mode--problem solving…