The purpose of the study is to determine the opinions of graduate students from social studies education regarding the qualitative research method. The study was conducted in accordance with the phenomenological design, one of the qualitative research designs. The sample group of the study was composed of 25 postgraduate students including 11…

Teacher research is lauded as a beneficial enterprise both for practitioners and for learners. However, teachers are sometimes accused of not possessing the necessary knowledge and skills to conduct research effectively. This article focuses on the need for teacher-researchers to find means of addressing the methodological challenges of engaging…

Conducting literature review is a complicated, sometimes confusing and laborious process that beginning educational researchers, especially graduate students, often find challenging. However, in the past these challenges were hardly considered, but in more recent times they have been increasingly considered by various faculties and graduate…

A major task of social work doctoral programs is preparing the next generation of researchers and educators in the profession. To develop competence in generating new knowledge relevant to social work practice and disseminating it to future practitioners, doctoral candidates need to master a broad and complicated set of theoretical, empirical, and…

Through case studies, this paper explores problems teachers face when doing action research: for instance, teachers may misunderstand the research, mistrust university researchers, lack the time or adequate library resources to conduct research, lack theoretical guidance or knowledge of research methodology, and feel pressure or frustration during…

Collaborative research is a demanding endeavor, and for a group of undergraduate students tasked with identifying their own interdisciplinary research problem, the challenges are even greater. "It was scary--we didn't know what to ask the professors, and we couldn't decide on a research question," says Miran Park, a student at the University of…

The objective of this target article is to chart the potential threat to research validity in the field of giftedness research, and by implication also the study and practice of gifted education, in the light of cultural bias. It endeavours to pull together facts from a number of academic disciplines to make sense of how culture relates to…

Educational researchers frequently study the impact of treatments or interventions on educational outcomes. However, when observational or quasiexperimental data are used for such investigations, selection bias can adversely impact researchers' abilities to make causal inferences about treatment effects. One way to deal with selection bias is to…

This article addresses the issue of falling response rates in telephone surveys. To better understand and maintain respondent goodwill, concepts of psychological contract and respondent expectations are introduced and explored. Results of the qualitative study show that respondent expectations are not only socially contingent but also…

Engaging with research methods requires, we argue, not only adherence to ethical codes of conduct, but caring for the researched. Researchers, who are also workers in the same organisation or community where the research will take place, have an additional duty not to violate the dignity of the researched, and that is the ethic of care. We discuss…

While universities can play a major role in advancing research-based community development, academic discourses of rigor, quality and ethics often conflict with the participatory and collaborative approaches required by community development principles. While experienced academics often have difficulty negotiating these issues, they present…

Learning how to conduct qualitative research may seem daunting for those new to the task, especially given the paradigm's emphasis on complexity and emergent design. Although there are guidelines in the literature, each project is unique and ultimately the individual researcher must determine how best to proceed. Reflexivity is thus considered…

This commentary considers some of the challenges of applying mixed methods research in undergraduate research degrees, especially in professions with a clinical health focus. Our experience in physiotherapy academia is used as an example. Mixed methods research is increasingly appreciated in its own right as a "third paradigm," however the success…

The article provides guidelines for readers who must read research articles but lack formal training in research and statistics. While discussing the purpose and content of each section of a research article (such as review of the literature, materials and procedures, and results) the author uses actual articles to illustrate her points.…

The impetus to broaden the scope of research education is not new. Since the 1970s, concern has been expressed about the suitability of research education as preparation for a research career outside academe. Universities have been criticized for producing over-specialized research graduates, who struggle to apply their expertise to new workplace…