The Code of Ethics of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) articulates a common set of values upon which education researchers build their professional and scientific work. The Code is intended to provide both the principles and the rules to cover professional situations encountered by education researchers. It has as its primary…

The technical complexities and sheer size of international large-scale assessment (LSA) databases often cause hesitation on the part of the applied researcher interested in analyzing them. Further, inappropriate choice or application of statistical methods is a common problem in applied research using these databases. This article serves as a…

In this article, the author provides an overview of existing literature addressing lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT), and queer issues in higher education. She argues that although colleges and universities are the source of much critical and postmodern writing about LGBT and queer topics, scholarship on LGBT/queer people and…

This article explores epistemological awareness and instantiation of methods, as well as uninformed ambiguity, in qualitative methodological decision making and research reporting. The authors argue that efforts should be made to make the research process, epistemologies, values, methodological decision points, and argumentative logic open,…

The author suggests that we apply recent research knowledge to improve our conceptualization, measures, and methodology for studying the effects of teachers' professional development on teachers and students. She makes the case that there is a research consensus to support the use of a set of core features and a common conceptual framework in…

As lines between research paradigms continue to blur with the ever-increasing popularity of mixed methods research, there are useful, and occasionally oxymoronic, opportunities for educational researchers to juxtapose tools from opposing methods. The gold standard is just not possible in so much of what we do with small-scale research, nor is it…

In this article, the author challenges the validity and usefulness of the concept of "paradigm," as this term has been used in the social sciences generally, and specifically in the debates over research methods. He emphasizes that in criticizing what he sees as the misuse of the paradigm concept, he is not arguing for dismissing or ignoring…

Value-added models help to evaluate the knowledge that school districts, schools, and teachers add to student learning as students progress through school. In this article, the well-known Education Value-Added Assessment System (EVAAS) is examined. The author presents a practical investigation of the methodological issues associated with the…

This article is intended to spark a discussion between two research communities--scholars who study learning and scholars who study educational organizations. A secondary purpose is to encourage researchers to look beyond schools to examine learning in other types of educational organizations. The authors outline a framework to guide research on…

Lissitz and Samuelsen (2007) have proposed an operational definition of "validity" that shifts many of the questions traditionally considered under validity to a separate category associated with the utility of test use. Operational definitions support inferences about how well people perform some kind of task or how they respond to some kind of…

This paper draws from the ARC Discovery project called "Moving Ideas: Mobile Policies, Researchers and Connections in the Social Sciences and Humanities--Australia in the Global Context" (2006-2009). This project explored the ways that ideas travel and how knowledge transforms through travel. One aspect of the study was the critical examination of…

In the United States as well as in much of the developed world, many of us tend to take for granted that children who do well on teacher-made and standardized tests are intelligent. But different cultures have different views of intelligence, so which children are considered intelligent may vary from one culture to another. Moreover, the acts that…

This paper discusses research examining the attitudes and behaviours of researching women in academia and considers the effect of these factors on successful researching outcomes. The results of this exploratory research highlight in particular, a number of interesting environmental influencers which contribute to enhancing successful work…

In this paper, two beginning qualitative researchers describe the challenges and successes of conducting a collaborative self-study. For two academic years, the authors wrote and analyzed personal narratives related to their experiences as a lesbian and a gay man, respectively, in educational contexts. This article addresses the data analysis…

Part-time engagement is a significant feature of senior secondary study for large numbers of students, in a context which includes high level policy pressures to achieve better outcomes for many more and a wider proportion of the schooling population, and significant policy and practice shifts at school, system and accreditation authority levels.…