This article presents an interview with Eric Barela, a K-12 school district internal evaluator who conducted the Title I Best Practices study for the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), Research and Planning Division (formerly known as the Program Evaluation and Research Branch). In this interview, the author focuses not only on the…

This article addresses the "state of qualitative inquiry" in the sense of how that inquiry is being positioned in the current construction of a US national policy agenda for "scientifically based" education research. In the author's view, qualitative inquiry is being drowned out in the national agenda despite its ability to…

The author of this essay contends that there is a need to expand the use of qualitative research methods to include healing and human restoration for the researcher as well as for the researched. This will require moving away from obsessions with positivistic conceptions of scientific research and exploring and using other possible functions of…

In this article, the authors comment on Hugh Foot's article on student research and ethics ["Psychology Teaching Review," 12(1), 82-86 (2006)] The authors agree with Foot that there is no case for accepting less stringent ethical criteria when the researcher is a student. However, they argue that greater attention and more stringent measures…

Qualitative research is a type of research process that is widely used to give people a voice while researching a particular subject matter. In using this research process, one must understand how important it is to develop research questions within the qualitative research process. The purpose of this article is to aid researchers in the…

Large-scale research projects, conducted in a cross-European context, are increasingly attractive to educational researchers and policy-makers. However, this form of comparative research across cultures brings problems concerning the standardization of data collection and analysis, particularly where ethnographic research is concerned, as it…

The importance of intuition and creativity in qualitative research is discussed. By discussing lessons learned from well-known creative individuals, it is possible to find ways to open a conversation on creativity. Since the researcher is the research instrument in qualitative research projects, the definition of the role of the researcher is…

Use of a focused autobiography to illuminate researcher bias in qualitative study had the unintended effect of identifying additional research questions. Hermeneutic theory suggests that bias or "preunderstanding" is a necessary condition of interpretation. (SK)

Details the philosophical and practical dimensions of five types of validity used in qualitative research: descriptive, interpretive, theoretical, generalizable, and evaluative, with corresponding issues of understanding. Presents this typology as a checklist of the kinds of threats to validity that may arise. (SK)

Sees qualitative assessment as offering counselor methods of helping clients to know and understand themselves better. Describes card sorts, simulations, exercises and games, and work samples, calling many methods projective in nature and thereby tapping values, interests, and needs in ways that standardized tests do not. Describes methods as…

This article presents an interview with Michael Patton whose professional evolution has contributed to the way evaluation in the United States is understood and practiced today. Patton is an evaluation and organizational development consultant who spent 18 years at the University of Minnesota (1973-1991), including 5 years as the director of the…

The state of qualitative research in education is addressed in this paper in terms of three categories of scientific inquiry (following Heap, 1992) and the varying place and function of qualitative work in each of these categories. The argument is put that one of these categories of inquiry, specifically cultural human sciences, offers the…

This essay explores factors creating Missouri's minimum attendance laws for black students from the end of the Civil War to the enactment of compulsory education in the state in 1905. It argues that, although blacks made notable efforts at educational advancement, they were caught in a crossfire of opposing forces stemming from wartime…

Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) usually uses three indicators in assessing research studies. These indicators are rigour, significance, and originality. In Ian Stronach's article, he claimed that RAE seemed to favor rigour over the other two rubrics. In this article, the author provides her arguments to Stronach's assumptions. The author…

Systems designed to ensure that teaching and student learning are of a suitable quality are a feature of universities globally. Quality assurance systems are central to attempts to internationalise higher education, motivated in part by a concern for greater global equality. Yet, if such systems incorporate comparisons, the tendency is to reflect…