Suggests that the choice of validity procedures in qualitative inquiry is governed by two perspectives: the lens researchers choose to validate their studies and the researchers' paradigm assumptions. The article advances a two-dimensional framework to help researchers identify appropriate validity procedures for their studies. Nine validity…

Demonstrates how nonacademic interviewing talents can inform how qualitative researchers perform and produce interviews, outlining key concepts and practices for better qualitative interviewing from journalists and other researchers and examining four elements of interview practice (background information, interview analysis, protocol creation and…

Discusses how to analyze qualitative data, presenting rules for unbiased data analysis, describing how to think about analysis, and explaining the five steps of doing the analysis: tidying up, finding items, creating stable sets of items, creating patterns, and assembling structures. The paper concludes by discussing the importance of making sure…

Discusses the link between personal involvement by researchers and good data, focusing on subjective qualitative researchers and research. The paper explains that getting close to subjects can: enhance the breadth and depth of the study; provide context for subjects; merge the subjects and the phenomena being studied; and merge passion and…

Suggests why qualitative research is frequently neither discussed nor used by the broad public, considering five barriers to making research more accessible, discussing how to make it more germane to problems faced by diverse groups in their everyday lives, and offering constructive ways to make qualitative research findings more accessible to the…

Discusses two dimensions of equity within small-group learning--access and equitable relations--describing complex instruction (CI) as an approach that lets educators address these issues. CI teachers use cooperative learning to teach at high academic levels in diverse classrooms. The paper describes CI in action, achievement results in CI…

Proposes 12 teacher attributes that are important in multicultural schools, focusing on specific teacher qualities and ideology and explaining that selecting teachers who are predisposed to perform the sophisticated expectations of multicultural teaching is a necessary precondition. Training has important value after preselection, providing it…

Examines how institutions can provide support for diversity in preservice teacher education, focusing on the institutional context in which teacher educators work as they craft multicultural teacher preparation programs. Support includes strong institutional leadership and a campuswide vision for change, recruitment and retention of diverse…

To increase the representation of people of color in teaching, the potential candidate pool must expand beyond those who are likely to attend college. Paraprofessional school personnel, who typically are from minority groups, constitute a ready source for increasing the supply of diverse teachers. Five strategies that contribute to the success of…

Cases offer prospective teachers vicarious experience in culturally different settings. This paper uses examples of cases from the Teachers for Alaska Program, which successfully altered the way teachers educated culturally diverse students. The paper considers how teacher education can create multicultural cases that address local circumstances…

Presents 14 design principles that explain good practice in multicultural preservice teacher education. The principles fall under the three main categories of (1) institutional and programmatic principles, (2) personnel principles, and (3) curriculum and instruction principles. (SM)

Provides guidelines for fairly and validly assessing students in small, cooperative groups. Discusses the purposes of assessment; how processes occurring during group collaboration may work for or against the purpose of assessment; how to design assessments with clear, consistent goals; issues involved in assigning students to groups; and…

Uses oral-language skills assessment to illustrate sound classroom assessment practices, stressing interrelationships among teaching, learning, and assessment and viewing assessment as a continual, ongoing reference in a dynamic process, not an end in itself. Describes supportive classroom environments, explains oral language profiles, and…

Describes efforts to help teachers learn to use new math and reading assessments in their classrooms, highlighting characteristics of professional development that successfully foster change in teachers' ideas and practice. After describing a multi-year staff development/research project on assessment, the paper discusses factors that support and…

Discusses values ascribed to performance assessment and recent criticisms of assessment and suggests model-based performance assessment for remedying and avoiding these criticisms. The paper explains the merits of a systematic approach to developing performance assessments and rubrics based on general models across ages and subject areas for…