This article presents a dialogic qualitative interview design for a narrative study of six international UK university students' motivation for learning English. Based on the work of Mikhail Bakhtin, this design was developed in order to address the limitations of member-checking [Lincoln, Y. S., and E. G. Guba. 1985. "Naturalistic…

This paper addresses Lincoln's [2010. "'What a long, strange trip it's been …': Twenty-five years of qualitative and new paradigm research." "Qualitative Inquiry" 16, no. 1: 3-9] call for greater attention to the question of rapport in qualitative research through a reflexive examination of…

Data collected from partners in a dyadic instructional setting are, by definition, not statistically independent. As a consequence, conventional parametric statistical analyses of change and influence carry considerable risk of bias. In this article, we illustrate a strategy to overcome this obstacle: the longitudinal actor-partner interdependence…

It is now widely understood that reflexivity constitutes a vital element of good qualitative research. However, reflexive accounts often draw on a single theoretical framework, thus privileging and legitimizing a particular interpretation of empirical data. This paper focuses on Alvesson and Sköldberg's "reflexive interpretation",…

This paper explores narratives as an effective means of capturing multiple identities of research participants in complex social environments in education research. In doing so, it explores the role of the narrator in two case studies in two modes of narrative inquiry. Both studies present narratives of young people, focusing on multiple…

This paper examines the challenges involved in implementing an action research project. It discusses a project which uses a series of interventions (unfreezing techniques, cases studies in conjunction with analogical encoding and lecturer input) to encourage students to critically reflect on their approach to career decision-making. This paper…

International comparison is complicated by the use of different terms, classification methods, policy frameworks and system structures, not to mention different languages and terminology. Multi-case studies can assist in the understanding of the influence wielded by cultural, social, economic, historical and political forces upon educational…

Not all research projects progress according to plan. When a project culminates in a published piece that the research participants do not support, what are the effects and for how long do they endure? Using a retrospective case study, this article explores what memory can teach us about the long-term ramifications of research conducted in…

This paper describes the design and methodology used to assess the impact of free primary education (FPE) policy in Nairobi, Kenya. The key outcome of the study was to assess the impact of FPE on schooling outcomes among the urban poor. The study assesses the impact of FPE by examining how two non-comparable groups responded to the introduction of…

This article addresses the under-theorization of visual techniques for social science research applications through the cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT). The "problem" of "the visual" in research is given an ontological framing by highlighting the ways in which the use of visual techniques as research tools--designed to elicit…

Quantitative secondary analysis of large-scale data can be combined with in-depth qualitative methods. In this paper, we discuss the role of this combined methods approach in examining the uptake of physics and chemistry in post compulsory schooling for students in England. The secondary data analysis of the National Pupil Database (NPD) served…

There has been considerable discussion in recent years about the role in educational research of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and systematic reviews (SR). Advocacy of these methods arose partly as a result of the spread of the notion of evidence-based practice from medicine into other fields, and of the rise of the "new public management"…

The purpose of our article is to illustrate the use of mixed methods research as necessary to uncover maximum information and perspective, increase corroboration of the data, and render less biased and more accurate conclusions. This study used the case study method to closely examine the people, issues, programmes and topics related to the…

This paper presents an argument against the wider adoption of complex forms of data analysis, using multi-level modeling (MLM) as an extended case study. MLM was devised to overcome some deficiencies in existing datasets, such as the bias caused by clustering. The paper suggests that MLM has an unclear theoretical and empirical basis, has not led…

This paper argues that if education practitioners, policy-makers and researchers are to gain insights from new forms of online self-representations, there is a need to take stock of research involving homepages in order to identify important methodological issues and lessons that need to be addressed in future research. Home page authorship…