The study reported in this article examines the nature of anxiety that undergraduate students experience in a research methods course and explores some of the factors that influence their anxiety levels. Two questionnaires measuring the attitudes towards research and the anxiety level were administered to 472 students enrolled in a research…

The application of educational research to practice remains an issue of concern, and yet there has been relatively little consideration of this in relation to reviews of research. While the professional user review hitherto represents the most relevant approach, this involves users applying the findings of an earlier review rather than carrying…

School systems may be usefully characterized according to Turner's proposed ideal types of sponsored and contest mobility. Germany is a critical case with respect to this typology because its secondary school system is stratified and selective, and yet it offers the opportunity for upward and downward mobility. Drawing on an analysis of a German…

As part of an exploratory study at three universities (two in the UK and one in the USA) of how first-year students in three disciplines (biology, electrical engineering and history) learn to argue, we conducted interviews (individual and group) with university faculty and students about the place of argument in their teaching and learning. Here…

Asynchronous computer mediated communication (CMC) would seem to be an ideal medium for supporting development in student argumentation. This paper investigates this assumption through two studies. The first study compared asynchronous CMC with face-to-face discussions. The transactional and strategic level of the argumentation (i.e. measures of…

Computer conferencing provides a new site for students to develop and rehearse argumentation skills, but much remains to be learnt about how to encourage and support students in this environment. Asynchronous text-based discussion differs in significant ways from face-to-face discussion, creating a need for specially designed schemes for analysis.…

This pilot study focuses on the potential of Evidence-based Dialogue Mapping as a participatory action research tool to investigate young teenagers' scientific argumentation. Evidence-based Dialogue Mapping is a technique for representing graphically an argumentative dialogue through Questions, Ideas, Pros, Cons and Data. Our research objective is…

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…

This article reviews and synthesizes over a decade of research that has used discourse analysis, dialogue modelling and empirical techniques to investigate educational argumentation and to design digital tools that support its practice. This approach--incorporating theoretical, empirical and design-based methods according to what tends to now be…

The majority of social scientists continue to dismiss literary narratives as data that might lead to complex understandings of human phenomena. Introducing a method I call "novel inquiry", I argue that literary narratives merit inclusion as a source of data for educational inquiry. Utilizing literary narratives as a data source expands and…

"Underachievement" has been one of the dominant discourses in education in recent times, but it is unclear what is meant by the term "underachievement", and there is no widely accepted way of defining or measuring it. This paper describes the final stage of a large study which used contextualised models to identify students who may be…

In this paper we suggest that the pursuit of ahistorical, universal truths in education is antithetical to creativity, learning and motivation in preservice teachers. We argue that learning to teach is a dynamic process embedded in networks of power in which educational truths are politically "accomplished" rather than innocently discovered. We…

This paper presents an illustration of how the regression-discontinuity design can be used to obtain an unbiased estimate of the causal effect of participating in a university remedial English program on first-year grade point average. First-year grade point averages were collected for 197 first-time, full-time university students, along with the…

Educational researchers have a responsibility to ensure that in whatever research paradigm they work, the research that is conducted is done so within an "ethic of respect" to those who participate. This implies a number of responsibilities on the part of the researcher that include ensuring trust, dignity, privacy, confidentiality and anonymity.…

The philosophical issues underpinning the quantitative-qualitative divide in educational research are examined. Three types of argument which support a resolution are considered: pragmatism, false duality and warranty through triangulation. In addition a number of proposed strategies--alignment, sequencing, translation and triangulation--are…