This user-friendly text takes a learn-by-doing approach to exploring research design issues in education and psychology, offering evenhanded coverage of quantitative, qualitative, mixed-methods, and single-case designs. Readers learn the basics of different methods and steps for critically examining any study's design, data, and conclusions, using sample peer-reviewed journal articles as practice opportunities. The text is unique in featuring full chapters on survey methods, evaluation, reliability and validity, action research, and research syntheses. Pedagogical Features *An exemplar journal article at the end of each methods chapter, together with questions and activities for critiquing it (including, where applicable, checklist forms to identify threats to internal and external validity), plus lists of additional research examples. *Research example boxes showing how studies are designed to address particular research questions. *In every chapter: numbered chapter objectives, bulleted summaries, subheadings written as questions, a running glossary, and end-of-chapter discussion questions. * Electronic Instructor's Resource Manual with Test Bank, provided separately--includes chapter outlines; answers to exercises, discussion questions, and illustrative example questions; and PowerPoints.

This handbook focuses on the often neglected dimension of interpretation in educational research. It argues that all educational research is in some sense ‘interpretive’, and that understanding this issue belies some usual dualisms of thought and practice, such as the sharp dichotomy between ‘qualitative’ and ‘quantitative’ research. Interpretation extends from the very framing of the research task, through the sources which constitute the data, the process of their recording, representation and analysis, to the way in which the research is finally or provisionally presented. The thesis of the handbook is that interpretation cuts across the fields (both philosophically, organizationally and methodologically). By covering a comprehensive range of research approaches and methodologies, the handbook gives (early career) researchers what they need to know in order to decide what particular methods can offer for various educational research contexts/fields. An extensive overview includes concrete examples of different kinds of research (not limited for example to ‘teaching’ and ‘learning’ examples as present in the Anglo-Saxon tradition, but including as well what in the German Continental tradition is labelled ‘pädagogisch’, examples from child rearing and other contexts of non-formal education) with full description and explanation of why these were chosen in particular circumstances and reflection on the wisdom or otherwise of the choice – combined in each case with consideration of the role of interpretation in the process. The handbook includes examples of a large number of methods traditionally classified as qualitative, interpretive and quantitative used across the area of the study of education. Examples are drawn from across the globe, thus exemplifying the different ‘opportunities and constraints’ that educational research has to confront in different societies.

This user-friendly text takes a learn-by-doing approach to exploring research design issues in education and psychology, offering evenhanded coverage of quantitative, qualitative, mixed-methods, and single-case designs. Readers learn the basics of different methods and steps for critically examining any study's design, data, and conclusions, using sample peer-reviewed journal articles as practice opportunities. The text is unique in featuring full chapters on survey methods, evaluation, reliability and validity, action research, and research syntheses. Pedagogical Features Include: *An exemplar journal article at the end of each methods chapter, together with questions and activities for critiquing it (including, where applicable, checklist forms to identify threats to internal and external validity), plus lists of additional research examples. *Research example boxes showing how studies are designed to address particular research questions. *In every chapter: numbered chapter objectives, bulleted summaries, subheadings written as questions, a running glossary, and end-of-chapter discussion questions. * Electronic Instructor's Resource Manual with Test Bank, provided separately--includes chapter outlines; answers to exercises, discussion questions, and illustrative example questions; and PowerPoints.

Emphasizing the comparative aspects of research, this introduction to educational research traces the process through five stages—choosing what to study, including specifying the research problem; collecting information; organizing and summarizing information; interpreting results; and reporting the outcomes. Each of the stages offers diverse options available to researchers for solving the problems of that stage, and a research project checklist at the end of each chapter guides readers in applying the chapter's contents to their own research studies. In much educational discourse, comparative education has referred solely to the study of educational similarities and differences between regions of the world or between two or more nations. This book uses the broader definition of the term to encompass a large body of research including studies focusing on comparisons between local educational systems, schools, classrooms, language groups, religious denominations, genders, social classes, and individual students. Students who are planning research projects as well as staff members of such organizations as ministries of education, school systems, bureaus of educational research, and educational aid agencies will find this volume indispensable.