This book is based on results from a National Science Foundation-supported project aimed at clarifying the nature of principles that govern the effective use of emerging new research designs in mathematics and science education. The project involved a series of mini-conferences in which leading researchers in mathematics and science education developed detailed specifications for the book, as well as planning and revising chapters to be included. Chapters also were field tested and revised during a series of doctoral research seminars that were sponsored by the National Center for Improving Student Learning & Achievement in Mathematics & Science at the University of Wisconsin.
Extensively updated and revised, this new edition urges teachers to engage in the debate about educational research by undertaking meaningful research themselves. Kincheloe argues that only by engaging in complex, critical research will teachers rediscover their professional status, empower their practice in the classroom and improve the quality of education for their pupils.
This survey originally appeared in N. L. Gage (editor) handbook of Research on Teaching published by Rand McNally Company in 1963, under the longer title "Experimental and Quasi-Experimental Designs for Research on Teaching." As a result, the introductory pages and many of the illustrations come from educational research. But as a study of the references will indicate, the survey draws from the social science in general, and the methodological recommendations are correspondingly broadly appropriate.
NOTE: Reprinted from Handbook of Research on Teaching
Second language acquisition (SLA) and foreign language learning (FLL) have been and continue to be viewed by many as largely unrelated fields of research or at best being only weakly connected disciplines. Over ten years ago, Frechette (1976: 377) noted that, 'By and large, observation of classroom practices and talks with classroom teachers have revealed that many feel a large portion of [SLA research] efforts are of little relevance to them'.
This book is written to guide student and novice researchers through their critical reading of a research paper in the field of second language learning.My aim is to help these readers relate the basic knowledge they acquire during introductory courses on investigation in applied linguistics to their own independent reading of research papers. They will be shown ways of approaching the appraisalof the abstract and the introductory section of the study, both of which set the stage by describing the rationale as well as the objective of the work. Similarly, the reader will be given ideas about how to assess the method and procedures section so that he or she can decide, for example, whether the research design was appropriate, and what precautions were taken to guard against threats of validity to the findings.
