This response to Perna et al. provides an alternate approach to research on massive open online courses (MOOCs). We argue that a student-centered, theory-driven conceptualization and methodological approaches allow us to move beyond descriptive statistics and into a deeper understanding of MOOC learners. Examples using a teacher development MOOC…

Seventeen years ago Gloria Ladson-Billings (1995) published the landmark article "Toward a Theory of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy," giving a coherent theoretical statement for resource pedagogies that had been building throughout the 1970s and 1980s. I, like countless teachers and university-based researchers, have been inspired by what it means…

In this article the author briefly brings up two related conceptual and political areas that Zeus Leonardo and the author might want to discuss further. These concern the status of the language of "resistance" and "agency," terms that play a large part in Leonardo's essay and that are now among the pantheon of accepted political and analytic…

In this article, the author reviews "Theory and Educational Research" and concludes that given some misgivings, the collection arrives at a nonfetishized appreciation for the role of theory in empirical research in education. Jean Anyon and her colleagues give theory its due, not more but also not less. In the same move, they recognize…

Michael Apple's prescient review of Anyon et al.'s "Theory and Educational Research" reminds the educational community of the importance of purpose. In his own work, he has been consistent in--actually, insistent on--emphasizing the struggle over political projects. This is not an issue concerning only the Left as the scapegoat for the disparaging…

This essay describes a vision of social class-sensitive pedagogy aimed at disrupting endemic classism in schools. We argue persistent upward mobility discourses construct classist hierarchies in schools and classroom practice and are founded on misunderstandings of work, lived experiences of social class, and the broader social and economic…

In this rejoinder to Willis, Smagorinsky, and Douglas, the authors discuss how many of the points raised by Willis and Smagorinsky regarding their original article, which appeared in the March 2009 issue of Educational Researcher, are concerned less with the methods themselves than with different styles of science. The authors of this rejoinder…

In this article, three theoretical perspectives are used to extend Bulterman-Bos's (2008) argument regarding a clinical approach to education research. First, three intellectual virtues identified by Aristotle--"episteme," "techne," and "phronesis"--are related to the requirements of the "pure" education researcher, the skilled practitioner, and…

Traditional methods for preparing systematic reviews and syntheses of effectiveness studies rely on a limited set of methodological criteria to include studies that measure and report effects too narrowly to forward the mission of evidence-based practice. This article discusses why and how the criteria for study selection, evidence screening, and…

Responding to Bulterman-Bos (2008), the author argues that the effort to make education research more relevant is counterproductive. Teachers and researchers have different orientations toward education that arise from different institutional settings, occupational constraints, daily work demands, and professional incentives. These are not…

Argues the good and the bad aspects of constructivism as revealed through the literature, and describes the framework of the three different dimensions constructivist writers fall into. The author also discusses the degree to which each dimension harbors various sociopolitical versus educational concerns. (GR)

Clarifies misperceptions of the author's analysis of the theory-practice dualism manifest in reconceptualist curriculum theorizing, replying to Henderson's inquiry about the author's perspective on curriculum practice by discussing the ideas of Tyler and Schwab and curriculum enactment. Proposes further deliberation on testing the new theories in…

This article raises a number of questions about the current unified theory of test validity that has construct validity at its center. The authors suggest a different way of conceptualizing the problem of establishing validity by considering whether the focus of the investigation of a test is internal to the test itself or focuses on constructs…

In response to Bulterman-Bos (2008), this article discusses three kinds of research needed in education: problem-finding research, which helps frame good research questions; problem-solving research, which helps illuminate educational problems; and translational work, which transforms the findings of research into tools that practitioners and…

Discusses challenges related to educational theory and practice, focusing on arenas for theoretical development (unifying the cognitive and the social, learning, the brain, transfer, reconceptualizing the nature versus nurture discussion, and social systems); theory and applications in synergy; and arenas for practical development (curriculum,…