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 study aims to develop a short German version of the Self Description Questionnaire (SDQ I-GS) in order to present a robust economical instrument for measuring German preadolescents' multidimensional self-concept. A full German version of the SDQ I (SDQ I-G) that maintained the original structure and thus length of the English original…

Texts and articles that put epistemological theories and methodologies to work in the context of qualitative research can stimulate scholarship in various ways such as through methodological innovations, transferability of theories and methods, interdisciplinarity, and transformative reflections across traditions and frameworks. Such…

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…

Student perceptions of teaching have often been used in tertiary education for evaluation purposes. However, there is a paucity of research on the validity, reliability, and applicability of instruments that cover a wide range of student perceptions of pedagogies and practices in high school settings for descriptive purposes. The study attempts to…

This article analyses selected texts from documents on the Free Compulsory Universal Basic Education (fCUBE) policy implementation in Ghana to unearth the discursive shift in policy (i.e. from predominantly socialist/social democratic towards neo-liberal ideological policy direction) in recent time. The methodological approach involves the…

This article revisits the critical realist ethnographic process that was adopted in my doctoral thesis, which was concerned with the experiences of ethnic identity of white British and Pakistani British children as they started kindergarten in the northwest of England. The article focuses on the ethnography that emerged from the visits that I…

This article explores some theoretical and methodological problems concerned with scale in education research through a critique of a recent mixed-method project. The project was framed by scale metaphors drawn from the physical and earth sciences and I consider how recent thinking around scale, for example, in ecosystems and human geography might…

In research textbooks, and much of the research practice, they describe, qualitative processes and interpretivist epistemologies tend to dominate visual methodology. This article challenges the assumptions behind this dominance. Using exemplification from three existing visual data sets produced through one large education research project, this…

Schools have a legal duty to make reasonable adjustments for disabled pupils who experience barriers to learning. Inclusive approaches to data collection ensure that the needs of all children who are struggling are not overlooked. However, it is important that the methods promote sustained reflection on the part of all children, do not…

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 aim of the article is to show how substantial qualitative material consisting of graphic cognitive maps can be analysed by using digital CmapTools, Excel and SPSS. Evidence is provided of how qualitative and quantitative methods can be combined in educational research by transforming qualitative data into quantitative data to facilitate…

Researchers interested in exploring substantive group differences are increasingly attending to bundles of items (or testlets): the aim is to understand how gender differences, for instance, are explained by differential performances on different types or bundles of items, hence differential bundle functioning (DBF). Some previous work has…

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…

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…