"The Wiley Handbook of Action Research in Education" is the first book to offer theoretical, conceptual, and applied/practical presentations of action research as it is found and conducted solely in educational settings. Covering primarily PK-12 educational settings, the book utilizes a cross-section of international authors and…

When conducting item reviews, analysts evaluate an array of statistical and graphical information to assess the fit of a field test (FT) item to an item response theory model. The process can be tedious, particularly when the number of human reviews (HR) to be completed is large. Furthermore, such a process leads to decisions that are susceptible…

The theme of this year's conference is "Sin Fronteras: Questioning Borders with(in) Mathematics Education." This theme is intended to encourage research presentations, discussion, and reflection on the variety of borders within mathematics education, as well as those that might be probed, challenged, explained, enhanced and/or…

Addresses the question of which large-sample binomial confidence interval method to teach in elementary classes. Suggests that a third alternative to z-intervals should be preferred to either t- or c-intervals. Makes comparisons among these intervals. (ASK)

Surveyed AERA members regarding their perceptions of: statistical issues and statistical significance testing; the general linear model; stepwise methods; score reliability; type I and II errors; sample size; statistical probabilities as exclusive measures of effect size; p values as direct measures of result value; and p values evaluating…

The dangers of equating "statistical significance" with "real world" significance are summarized. When a finding is said to have "statistical significance," it means only that the same results would be likely to occur again if the study were repeated, not that the finding has any true personal or societal importance. (VW)

This chapter describes how the mean of fractal processes does not exist and is not a meaningful measure of some data. It discusses how important it is to stay open to the possibility that sometimes analytic techniques fail to satisfy some assumptions on which the mean is based. (KHR)

The days in which the school practitioner could get by without a knowledge of statistics are over. Educators today need to be able to evaluate data, and data are statistics. It is necessary to deal with statistics when they appear and to provide them when they are needed or expected. This book attempts to provide an understanding of statistics,…

Explores challenges of learning to think about data as signal and noise. Examines the signal/noise metaphor in the context of three different statistical processes: (1) repeated measures; (2) measuring individuals; and (3) dichotomous events. Makes several recommendations for research and instruction on the basis of this analysis. (Author/KHR)

Analyzes open-ended interviews and written responses from 62 students in grades 3, 6, and 9 to a questionnaire to understand the characteristics of students' constructions of the concept of sample. Identifies six categories of construction in relation to the sophistication of developing concepts of sampling by illustrating helpful and unhelpful…

Presents two programs for the TI-83 to conduct the chi-square goodness-of-fit test in an elementary statistics course or any other course that might require students to conduct hypothesis tests relative to some frequency distribution. (ASK)

The National Forum on Education Statistics (Forum) is a cooperative of state, local, and federal education agencies. The goal of Forum activities is to improve the quality of education data gathered for use by policymakers and programmatic decision-makers. One approach to furthering this goal has been to pool the collective experiences of Forum…

Journal editors respond to criticisms of reliance on statistical significance in research reporting. Joel R. Levin ("Journal of Educational Psychology") defends its use, whereas William D. Schafer ("Measurement and Evaluation in Counseling and Development") emphasizes the distinction between statistically significant and important. William Asher…

Advances in computer technology are making it possible for educational researchers to use simpler statistical methods to address a wide range of questions with smaller data sets and fewer, and less restrictive, assumptions. This digest introduces computationally intensive statistics, collectively called resampling techniques. Resampling is a…

This edition, the 24th report in a series begun in 1964, provides revisions of projections shown in the previous year's report. It includes statistics on elementary and secondary schools and institutions of higher education at the national level, projecting figures for enrollment, graduates, classroom teachers, and expenditures to the year 2005.…