Over the last three decades, there has been increased attention on the collection and interpretation of "response processing data" to inform claims of learners' knowledge and skills (e.g., see Ercikan et al., 2010; Kobrin & Young, 2003; see also, Leighton, 2004). Response processing data are perhaps most consequential in the…

Our study investigates preservice teachers' perceptions of real-world problems; their beliefs about teaching real-world contexts, especially ones sociopolitical in nature; and their ability to pose meaningful real-world problems. In this paper we present cases of three preservice teachers who participated in interviews that probed their thinking…

This paper analyses the financial circumstances and social income of nearly one hundred unaccompanied minors who have come to Hamburg as refugees from various regions of Africa. It is based on extensive qualitative surveys, analysing their objective conditions of life and in particular their legal situation. A wide range of interview material and…

This two and a half year study examines how non-native English-speaking Burmese refugee students from first to third grades made meaning of scientific informational texts. The study is framed by sociocultural theory and transactional theory. Primary data were drawn from 160 student retellings of scientific informational texts. Secondary data…

Recent research on Literature education in Singapore has highlighted the state of ambivalence of the Literature curriculum (Choo, 2004); suggested possibilities for its reconceptualisation, taking into consideration the environment and impact of globalisation (Holden, 2000; Choo, 2011); and considered the offering of alternative curricula (Poon,…

Researchers seem to discuss only rarely the actual activities and strategies involved in the research process. Part of the problem is in the current conception of research method, which continues to insist that empirical methods are neutral procedures for obtaining results. At every step of the research process, researchers discursively construct…

Twenty-five near native speakers of a second language (L2) were interviewed about the linguistic, sociological, psychological, and emotional reasons involved in the process of fossilization in foreign language learning. All of the subjects considered that their command of the target language was not as good as a native speaker's of that target…

This study investigated what and how preschool children view children's television programs, with a focus on cultural and ecological factors which might affect their visual attention and the nature of their immediate recall of content. The secondary task method (in which an individual is required to perform two tasks simultaneously) was applied to…

This exploratory study investigates social support systems available to and utilized by new parents and indicates those aspects of the systems that are most helpful to them. Forty intact couples whose first child was between the ages of 3 and 7 months constituted the final sample of this study. The mean age of mothers and fathers was 30.70 and…

Consonant with the current concern for achievement of minority students, the two action research projects described in this paper use interviews and case studies of 10 African American high school students to address some issues related to motivation in the learning of mathematics, particularly as this motivation concerns aspects of the family…

To discover what effects the political, religious, social, and economic climate had on naming children, 100 families (representing almost 700 individuals) were interviewed to identify patterns in first names given over three generations. The sample of 100 families includes people from different religious backgrounds and from different parts of…

Decades of government interventions, an improved infrastructure, and support for industrialization have not resolved problems of persistent poverty in central Appalachia. This paper investigates characteristics of poverty previously overlooked in development initiatives and poverty research. In particular, it demonstrates the role of gender in the…

Ethnographic interviews were conducted to determine how criminals assessed their treatment by the media. Twenty-five inmates, all participants in a mass media communications journalism course at Pendleton Reformatory in Pendleton, Indiana, were videotaped while answering the question: How do you regard the treatment given you by the media during…

Chair placement was used to determine the effect on social distance created by a person being perceived as homosexual in orientation. Eighty undergraduates subjects, 40 male and 40 female, were interviewed for 10 minutes by either a male or a female experimenter who orally administered a specifically designed Attitude Towards Homosexuality Scale.…

In a sociolinguistic study of the verb phrase in Southern White English, a pattern of change in progress was observed. The 14 variables studied showed that certain variants were increasing, others decreasing, and yet others stable across time within the community, and that each variable's change was progressing in a wave sensitive to age, social…