This paper explores the nature of postgraduate research in the broad area of Pacific education completed in New Zealand universities. First, a number of basic trends are identified in terms of institutional affiliation, area of educational research, MA and PhD balance, growth over time, national/ethnic focus and the expected beneficiaries of the…

The cognitive and learning styles research domain is a highly complex one which has recently been the focus of rigour-relevance debates (Coffield et al. 2004; Evans and Sadler-Smith 2006; Rayner 2006). There is considerable support for the existence and value of style as a construct (Sternberg 1996) even though further work is needed to evidence…

This model for solving educational problems consists of four major steps: (1) the problem is defined and verified; (2) solution criteria are established; (3) solution alternatives are surveyed; and (4) a solution is selected. "Problem" is defined as the discrepancy between an existing condition and a desired condition. This model is to be…

Concludes that if we do find ourselves in a situation of multiple paradigmatic perspectives on educational research, then it is not appropriate to think in the near future of there being a 'ground synthesis' of quantitative and qualitative methodologies. If the two major paradigms do exist as outlined here, and neither finds its present framework…

Reflects on the past three decades of increasing specialization and on the diverse conceptual frameworks guiding research in the field of educational administration. Describes heterogeneity among researchers, field-based research and policy studies, linkages across specialty areas, and key points of remaining articles. Fifty-three footnotes are…

Three aspects of educational research have hindered a truly scientific approach--artificially simple laboratory settings, a reliance on post hoc computer analysis, and the rule of the contract office. A more scientific setting might be created if three requirements are satisfied: (1) research should be carried out in life situations; (2) focus…

Explains the function of formative evaluation and the evaluation techniques that can be used in the various stages of educational computing research and development. Topics include computer software design; selecting evaluation standards; and a framework for formative evaluation, including theoretical models, expert consultation, and field…

During the 1972-1973 school year the Intercultural Social Studies Project for Secondary Schools created and maintained a culture studies network involving 103 teachers and their students. More than 50 "Fieldstaff Perspectives" were designed in booklet, photograph, map, and simulation-games formats for field testing within the project network.…

A survey in education describes the present condition of an educational program and forms the basis for knowing what is happening in a particular school. This volume is intended to be a practical guide to school surveying in South Korea, but not a scholarly thesis on surveys. The emphasis is on field studies and how surveyors can perform a school…

Exploratory case study research, conducted in selected Individually Guided Instruction (IGE) elementary home-school environments, focused on four objectives: describe IGE implementation and home-school-community relations, explain objective one in political terms, generate hypotheses, and make recommendations. Approximately 50 interviews were…

This research study deals with the relationships of personality and intelligence to English school achievements in the seventh grade of Finnish secondary school. Emphasis is placed upon student factors in learning and teaching a foreign language, particularly upon those student variables which the teacher can influence. A literature review…

The 27 school reform models presented in this publication have been supported, at some time in their development and dissemination, by the National Institute on the Education of At-Risk Students in the Office of Educational Research and Improvement, U.S. Department Education. As part of its mission, the Institute supports the development of…

A study was done to discover and generate a theory of instructional design based on procedures currently used in selected adult education agencies. The methodology used was to generate grounded theory in four stages as follows: (1) discovery of a number of categories into which the collected data are coded, (2) integration of the categories and…

Patterns of problem-solving activity in one middle-class urban high school are examined and a problem solving model rooted in a conceptual framework of contingency theory is presented. Contingency theory stresses that as political, economic, and social conditions in an organization's environment become problematic, the internal structures of the…

New perspectives on social science research suggest five propositions: studies in higher education must not be value-singular; higher education researchers must not ignore "harbingers of the paradigm revolution"; they must take into account new interpretations of knowledge acquisition; they must not depend on prescriptive models; and they must…