Bourdieu's theory of cultural and social reproduction posits that students' habitus--learned behavioural and perceptual dispositions rooted in family upbringing--is a formative influence on how they react to their educational environments, affecting academic practices and academic achievement. Although originally conceived as a…

This study estimates the impact of schools' physical resources and teachers' academic press on students' academic achievement in mathematics and reading when a number of important student variables are controlled. Academic press is defined as teachers' emphasis on academic excellence and upholding academic standards (McDill, Natriello, & Pallas,…

The purpose of this study was to explore to what extent 87 grade 5 (10-12-year-old) children, supported by instruction about scientific models, could engage in thinking beyond a naive realist level about a globe. A qualitative framework allowed analysis of children's responses to worksheet questions in which they identified analog-target…

Arguing for new models of inquiry that interrogate body image from the perspective of intercorporeality, this article explores a research study conducted in a secondary school art class. Shifting analysis from the representation of body image to a tactile, sensuous, and experiential understanding of body image, I highlight the contradictions and…

Understanding children's experience is increasingly a key purpose of much educational research. In contrast to traditional approaches to the study of children that emphasized the socialization of children through various stages of development, researchers within the social constructionism perspective begin with an insistence that childhood is a…

This article presents three research methods--Think Alouds, Think Afters, and Think Togethers--as ways of gathering data to describe the experiences of adolescents during instructional activities. These verbal report methods were used in two studies that examined the information-seeking processes of adolescents in Inuvik, Northwest Territories and…

This research examines the effects of social capital on teacher identity in a sample of undergraduate after-degree education students who took most or all of their courses together as a cohort. A theoretical model containing nine variables including university and social background, social capital, and teacher identity is presented. The data…

This study examines to what extent fathers' and mothers' involvement in schooling is related to children's school outcomes, taking into account differences in family social status, social structure, and children's perceptions of their school learning environments. The findings suggested that (a) mothers were more involved in their children's…

Although some of the literature on teaching qualitative research methods courses has included students' experiences during courses, these experiences have not been made a primary focus of study and examined systematically. To gain a fuller understanding of students' experiences during a graduate-level qualitative methods course, 13 reflective…

This article extends recent research on item parameter drift by investigating the robustness properties of basic unidimensional IRT models. Specifically, the article explores whether it is possible to advocate the consistent choice of one model over another based on its robustness properties under drift. On the one hand, it is shown that the…

The purpose of this study was to examine the potential effect of false assumptions regarding the motivation of examinees on item calibration and test construction. A simulation study was conducted using data generated by means of several models of examinee item response behaviors (the three-parameter logistic model alone and in combination with…

In this article we propose a model for collaboration in education. We begin by examining the roots of collaboration in consultation, collegiality, and cooperation. We then delineate the features of collaboration as phenomenon and process, offering the view that through talk, action, and reflection among individuals a community of learners emerges.…

Using structural equation modeling and data on 10th-grade students from the Longitudinal Study of American Youth, a model was developed to show the relationship to career aspiration of eight indicators of "educational productivity": mathematics achievement; motivation; instructional quantity and quality; home, class, and peer environment; and mass…

The Zhu model for analyzing computer mediated communications was further developed by an Athabasca University (Alberta) distance education research team based on ease of use, reliability, validity, theoretical support, and cross-discipline utility. Five classification categories of the new model are vertical questioning, horizontal questioning,…

A case study examined a whole-school model for supervising preservice teachers. The model employs constructivist notions that in a social-cultural context a persons' knowledge is created, examined, and transformed rather than simply transmitted and absorbed. The role of university facilitators changed from monitoring to mentoring, enhancing…