This article considers what might be taught to meet a widely held curriculum aim of students being able to understand research in a discipline. Expertise, which may appear as a "chain of practice," is widely held to be underpinned by networks of understanding. Scientific research expertise is considered from this perspective. Within…

This paper employs meta-analysis to determine the influence of computer-based scaffolding characteristics and study and test score quality on cognitive outcomes in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education at the secondary, college, graduate, and adult levels. Results indicate that (a) computer-based scaffolding positively…

The authors have over the years tried to revise meta-analysis because it's basic premise is to add apples and oranges together and analyze. In other words, various data on the same subject are chosen using different samples, research strategies, and number properties. The findings are then homogenized and a statistical analysis is used (Snell, J.…

The National Assessment Governing Board adopted a Program of Preparedness Research in March 2009. Several categories of research studies were recommended to produce results for reporting 12th grade preparedness for the 2009 grade 12 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in reading and mathematics. The categories included content…

Drawing on papers by the statistician Robert Matthews, this article questions the standard formula for tests of significance used to validate research results, returning instead to the theorem proposed by Thomas Bayes in the eighteenth century, which starts with a subjective assessment of plausibility. (Author/DB)

Discusses aspects of quantitative experimental design to help college science faculty investigate college-level science instruction. (PR)

The disappointing results of research into growth in writing skills may be due to students being tested for skills other than those they have been taught.

Explains the author's process in constructing and validating a survey, called the Preferred College Classroom Environment Scale, for her dissertation on women's perceptions of themselves in the college classroom. Offers suggestions to educators who want to construct their own surveys for program evaluation or similar types of research. Contains 30…

Only a limited number of single-subject studies exist in the literacy field, despite the upsurge of such studies in a wide variety of disciplines. The phrase "single-subject" refers not so much to the number of subjects, but to the way the data are analyzed: each subject's responses are examined individually; they are not averaged with…

Experimental methods have been used extensively for many years to conduct research in education and psychology. However, applications of experiments to investigate technology and other instructional innovations in higher education settings have been relatively limited. The present paper examines ways in which experiments can be used productively…

A number of examples are presented to illustrate a common flaw in the published research on learning, memory, and instruction. Experimental subjects--often college students--have certain expectations about the problems they will be asked to solve and about the questions that will appear on reading comprehension or recall tests; these expectations…

This paper provides a progress report on an investigation to validate and extend the autocatalytic model for the adoption of educational innovations. Three topics are dealt with: (1) a brief description is provided of the autocatalytic model and its current application, (2) the design of a survey to collect data for further tests of the model is…

This paper provides an understanding of the conceptual and operational relationships between evaluation, content analysis, and microcomputers so that evaluation practitioners can better address applied content analysis problems used in their work. The first section presents a general model for conducting an evaluation effort that focuses on…

A large data set of student ratings of college teaching was studied to explore previous indications that student ratings are affected by the subject area of instruction. Previous research by Marsh (1984), Feldman (1978), and Cranton and Smith (1986) reported the influence of factors other than instruction. To examine the impact of subject area on…

This paper offers reasons for using traditional quantitative research methods and illustrates some of the considerations demanding rigor in a study on gender discrimination in school-administrator salaries. Traditional quantitative methods provide a meaningful language based on numbers and objectivity, and they are less time-consuming and complex…