This book is a guide is for school practitioners who want to know more about planning and conducting focus groups as an aid to decision-making. It emphasizes practical and cost-effective ways to ensure accurate results. After defining the focus group, chapter 1 offers ways focus groups can be used in schools and reasons for using them. Chapter 2…

Expanding on Ruth Sidney Charney's ideas in "Teaching Children to Care," this book addresses the question of adding a caring dimension to classroom practice. The book draws on case studies from six elementary classroom teachers as they incorporate some aspect of a caring curriculum to their students. The book is divided into three parts with the…

This book describes how it feels and what it means to do qualitative research, and it provides support for doctoral students who choose this form of inquiry for their dissertation research. It serves as a guide to the processes and procedures involved in writing the qualitative dissertation. The reflections of research correspondents are the data…

Visual research is reemerging across the social sciences as a significant, underutilized resource producing unique lines of inquiry and sparking innovative pedagogies. Stanczak's edited volume crisscrosses disciplines in ways that highlights the multiple manifestations of this newer interdisciplinary trend. As such, this volume will be useful as…

Teachers are being encouraged to use observational strategies for a variety of professional purposes in assessment and evaluation. Observation differs from just "looking" in that the personal experience of looking is transformed into a public event by the systematic recording of what is seen and by subsequent analysis and interpretation.…

Giving a human face to the wealth of statistical information on literacy problems in Canada, a qualitative study investigated the experiences and views of socially and educationally disadvantaged people in Canada. Open-ended interviews were conducted with 105 persons with low literacy skills from every province and territory in Canada. In…

The aim of this book is to assist people who use interviewing as a means of gathering information. It is a practical guide to more effective techniques and provides methods relevant to a variety of contexts. After a review of the psychological bases of interviewing, the types of interview are discussed as follows: (1) personal data reporting; (2)…

This book, the first volume of the paperback versions of the "The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research, Third Edition," takes a look at the field from a broadly theoretical perspective, and is composed of the Handbook's Parts I ("Locating the Field"), II ("Major Paradigms and Perspectives"), and VI ("The Future of Qualitative Research"). "The…

Action research is, quite often, the method of enquiry employed by undergraduate and postgraduate students in higher education who are studying for accredited courses. In recent years, students studying for taught doctorate (EdD) degrees with their focus on practical aspects of education are also adopting action research as a method of study. This…

This volume contains essays related to various aspects of higher education, focusing on both educational theory and research. The chapters are: (1) "Apologia pro Vita Mia" (Robert Berdahl); (2) "Varieties of Validity: Quality in Qualitative Research" (Yvonna S. Lincoln); (3) "Academic Freedom and Federal Courts in the 1990s: The Legitimation of…

The United States has a long record of ambivalence toward recent immigrants. Nowhere is this love-hate relationship more evident than in the public school systems of high-immigration states like California, where pro- and anti-immigration advocates have waged a long-running battle over "bilingual" education versus "English…

A practical guide for designing and carrying out qualitative case study in education is provided. How-to advice for managing all phases of case study research is included. The focus is on case studies that draw from what is commonly known as the qualitative research paradigm rather than a quantitative, positivistic, experimental orientation. Three…

This book presents a human development model for understanding and treating age related deficits that seem to be characteristic of individuals with learning disabilities. It is the culmination of years of clinical experience, qualitative research, and scholarship in the search for a framework that would be useful for the treatment of learning…

This book is a collection of original essays on the practice of linguistic fieldwork and language documentation. Twelve leading linguistics have contributed chapters about the study of languages in a natural setting. They pass on lessons learned, best practices, and discuss a wide variety of topics including the attitude of the linguistic, the…

This book represents the results of a 15-year study based on case studies of the development of four teachers' pedagogical thinking. It illustrates how teachers' thinking (about children's behavior, development, learning, and teaching) develops over time based on their personal and professional life experiences. Data come from regular, periodic…