Over the course of a 5-year applied research project with more than 1,400 middle school students, evidence from a number of studies revealed that retrieval practice in authentic classroom settings improves long-term learning (Agarwal et al. 2009; McDaniel et al., "Journal of Educational Psychology" 103:399-414, 2011; McDaniel et al.…

This essay explains the relevance of fiction to the practice of rural education research, in so doing engaging questions about the nature and purposes of research and, therefore, of science itself. Although many may assume science and fiction (in this account, novels) harbor contrary purposes and devices, this essay argues that, to the contrary,…

This is the second of four essays discussing John Dewey's short essay, "Education as engineering". Dewey's views are remarkably timely against the background of recent discussions about the role of evidence in educational practice and a call for research that tells us "what works". Dewey's view is nuanced and helps one to see what one should and…

Quality pedagogical tradition of Central European countries, in which the Croatian school system existed and evolved, helped in the establishment of the Department of Methodology of Teaching (in several disciplines) at the University of Zagreb and other Croatian universities (Split, Rijeka and Osijek). Unfortunately, it was not too long ago that…

Qualitative methods have become common in statistics education research, but questions linger about their role in scholarship. Currently, influential policy documents lend credence to the notion that qualitative methods are inherently inferior to quantitative ones. In this paper, several of the questions about qualitative research raised in recent…

This study suggests a novel approach, which integrates an explicit-reflective nature of science (NOS) instruction into the teachers-as-researchers approach to improve pre-service science teachers' conceptions of NOS. Participants were 48 university fourth-year students in a four-year pre-service science teacher-training program in Turkey. The…

Greenhow, Robelia, and Hughes (2009) argue that Web 2.0 media are well suited to enhancing the education research community's purpose of generating and sharing knowledge. The author of this comment article first articulates how a research infrastructure with capabilities for communal bookmarking, photo and video sharing, social networking, wikis,…

In response to Howe (2009), the author argues that educational research needs multiple thoughtful perspectives. The author's standpoint is that of a mixed methods research methodologist. Mixed methods research provides an antidualistic and syncretic philosophy and set of approaches or possibilities for merging insights from diverse perspectives;…

Howe's (2009) critique of positivistic tendencies in the education research community is valuable and pertinent. His analysis is nonetheless one-sided, finding fault with one side of current divisions alone. In an effort to retain the good points of his analysis, the author first summarizes Howe's argument, interpreting it as a critique of hasty…

This paper evaluates comprehensive psycho-educational research on early intervention for children with autism. Twenty-five outcome studies were identified. Twenty studies evaluated behavioral treatment, 3 studies evaluated TEACCH and 2 studies evaluated the Colorado Health Sciences Project. Outcome studies are graded according to their scientific…

This paper aims to further articulate multicultural science education scholarship. In particular, it explores the notions of borders and border epistemologies as intellectual resources to think again about the challenges of science education in the global world that demand more sophisticated concepts to unravel some of its complexities. It…

Researchers and practitioners need to exchange information in order for education research to become more useful. Practitioners need to develop more understanding of research and how to interpret its findings in light of local conditions. The What Works Clearinghouse, a project of the Institute for Education Sciences of the U.S. Department of…

By examining the respective contributions of Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn to the philosophy of science, the author highlights some prevailing problems in this article with the methods of so-called scientific research in education. The author enumerates a number of reasons why such research, in spite of its limited tangible return, continues to gain…

In literacy education, neuroscience research has been alluded to increasingly in work meant to substantiate cognitive models of the reading process related to text decoding and its instruction. As a result, this material tends to focus on early reading or reading disability and dyslexia (e.g., Hudson, High, & Al Otaiba, 2007; Shaywitz, 2003). It…

Professionals mostly agree that scientific research should guide practice in education. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEIA; 2004) and the No Child Left Behind Act (2002) require that students with disabilities receive research-based practices in the "least restrictive environment." Because the least…