Social network research on teachers and schools has risen exponentially in recent years as an innovative method to reveal the role of social networks in education. However, scholars are still exploring ways to incorporate traditional quantitative methods of Social Network Analysis (SNA) with qualitative approaches to social network research. This…

This paper explores how factors operating at the state and community levels are associated with the prevalence of late school enrolment in Nigeria. We investigate the following three research themes. First, whether late entry varies across states and across communities and how much of this variation can be explained by the composition of…

A 30-item survey was devised to determine Chinese TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) academics' potential for conducting research. A five-part Likert scale was used to gather data from 182 academics on four factors: (1) perceptions on teaching-research nexus, (2) personal perspectives for conducting research, (3) predispositions for…

The paper draws on the work of Willms [2006. "Learning divides: Ten policy questions about the performance and equity of schools and schooling systems." Montreal: UNESCO Institute for Statistics] to present an analytical approach to the study of academic achievement disparities related to family socioeconomic status. The approach is illustrated by…

This article explores theoretical and methodological issues associated with task-based interviews conducted with pairs of children. We explore different approaches to interviews from sociological, psychological and subject-based perspectives. Our interviews, concerning mathematical questions and carried out with pairs of 10 and 11-year-olds, are…

The Children Crossing Borders (CCB) study is a polyvocal, multi-sited project on immigration and early childhood education and care in five countries: Italy, Germany, France, England and the USA. The complicated nature of the data pushed us as a group to expand our methodological resources to not only organize the data but also to make it…

In recent decades, proponents of naturalistic and/or critical modes of inquiry advocating the use of ethnographic techniques for the narrative-based study of phenomena within pedagogical contexts have challenged the central methodological paradigm of educational research: that is, the tendency among its practitioners to adhere to quantitative…

In response to Denzin and Lincoln's claim that using a variety of interpretive analyses enables a better understanding of the world, I examine two different analyses of the same data set. Using a survey of preservice elementary education students (n = 208) asked to describe their perceptions of teacher professionalism, I contrast the application…

Postmodern and deconstructionist approaches are necessarily concerned with "making visible" and working with marginalized "others". This article explores how theory as method might enable us to revisit methodological approaches that have conventionally relied upon semantic readings of the text. Deconstruction clears the way for such approaches…

This paper considers the idea of a crisis in educational research. Some conventional expressions of that "crisis" are examined in terms of their assumptions about what is "proper" to educational research. The paper then affirms the role of "metaphysics" in educational research as a necessary dimension of method, as opposed to the naive assertion…

A recent issue of "International Journal of Research & Methods in Education" (IJRME) contained a challenging article by Stephen Gorard ["The Dubious Benefits of Multi-Level Modelling," "International Journal of Research & Method in Education," Vol. 30 (2), p221-236 (2007)] in which he attacks aspects of current practice in statistical modelling,…

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"…

Toulmin's model of argument has been used by researchers as a theoretical perspective on argument and as a methodological tool for analysing episodes of oral argumentation in school science. An adaptation of Toulmin's Argument Pattern (TAP) has also informed a professional development programme for teachers. Research on the impact of the programme…

In the IEA PIRLS International Report, a number of indices of reading-related constructs were introduced for the purpose of explaining the variation in reading achievement. These indices, however, raise issues of reliability and validity, due to the way in which they are derived and due to the quality of the data. Targeting these issues, the…