Research in psychology and education tend to use large-N group designs that necessitate reporting of mean measures analyzed mostly with null hypothesis statistical testing (NHST), but sometimes with Bayesian, or the estimation approaches in inferential statistics. These approaches all render the average person or student as the the putative…

Environmental education research often emphasizes the importance of community context, but conceptualization and measurement of environmental literacy has mostly occurred at the individual level, often focusing on individual behaviors. The environmental problems facing the world today require collective action--communities coming together to…

The present study explores how the visualization of an actor network enables researchers to understand mediating processes better by investigating relationships and effects among elements and entities other than human-actor accounts. In particular, the study presents how visualization may facilitate an understanding of the dynamics and structures…

The scientific rigor of education research has improved dramatically since the year 2000. Much of the credit for this improvement is deserved by Institute of Education Sciences (IES) policies that helped create a demand for rigorous research; increased human capital capacity to carry out such work; provided funding for the work itself; and…

This essay argues for the urgent need for philosophy as the necessary first step in any educational undertaking. Philosophy is involved with making fine distinctions which are necessary to clarify concepts and terms. The paper focuses primarily on the problems with an overreliance on scientific research in the social sciences, with special…

This paper provides the first mixed methods theory of causation. According to the theory, the researcher must carefully construct a causal mosaic for each research study, articulating what is causally relevant given his/her research questions, purposes, method(s), methodology(ies), paradigms(s), and resources. To engage in this "mixed…

In this paper, problems with the philosophy and research relating to various interpretations of 'closing the gap' are used to open up a discussion of, and illustrate, the process whereby a narrow interpretation of 'science' and neglect of systems thinking result in the generation of huge amounts of dangerous and misleading misinformation and…

In this paper, we investigate two purported problems with Bayesian Knowledge Tracing (BKT), a popular statistical model of student learning: "identifiability" and "semantic model degeneracy." In 2007, Beck and Chang stated that BKT is susceptible to an "identifiability problem"--various models with different…

Single-case researchers frequently adopt a form of response-guided experimentation where decisions about the design of the study are made based on an ongoing visual analysis. For example, multiple-baseline researchers may delay the start of intervention until data document a stable baseline pattern so that baseline trends can be reliably extended,…

This research aims to make a methodological contribution to the mixed methods literature by investigating the value-added of empirical studies that are explicitly framed with the purpose of interrogating divergent findings. Case studies introduce the role philosophical paradigms can play in reconciliation process and reveal the potential to…

In this paper, we investigate two purported problems with Bayesian Knowledge Tracing (BKT), a popular statistical model of student learning: "identifiability" and "semantic model degeneracy." In 2007, Beck and Chang stated that BKT is susceptible to an "identifiability problem"--various models with different…

On October 14, 2016, the National Center for Special Education Research (NCSER) and the National Center for Education Research (NCER) in the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) convened a group of experts to gain insights and advice on how best to support the advancement of evidence beyond an efficacy study. Discussion followed five topics of…

Good practice in primary research has evolved over many decades of research in applied linguistics to counter human fallibility and biases. Surprisingly, perhaps, synthesising such research in an entire field has only recently started to develop its own methodologies and recommendations. This paper outlines some of the issues involved, especially…

In this paper I take up the questions posed by the conference organisers with respect to what we have learned and where we are going in technology-based research in mathematics education research. I begin by troubling the metaphors of crossroads and intersections and argue--through a wide range of considerations in relation to past research, to…

Ethnographic research is an emerging research technique in the field of education. Ethnographic research was a procedure usually used in anthropology but now it is getting popular in educational field. This kind of research relies on qualitative data, its perspective is holistic and its procedures of data analysis involve contextualization. Data…