Network ethnography and the cyberflâneur: evolving policy sociology in education

This paper makes the argument that new global spatialities and new governance structures in education have important implications for how we think about education policy and do education policy analysis. This context necessitates that researchers engage in new methodologies to ensure that there is a suitable link between their research problem and the methods utilised for its investigation. To this end, I suggest that network ethnography can be conceived as a ‘threshold’ methodology; a new way of looking at social relations in changing times with attendant methodological benefits and shortcomings. Here I constitute the network ethnographer as cyberflâneur, who, like the nineteenth-century flâneur is lured by and attentive to the ‘new’, where they embrace the convergence of space and new technologies to become a well-positioned observer of contemporary policy processes. In focusing on the cyberflâneur, this paper aims to provoke debate amongst policy sociology researchers about how we can reflect on and modify our practice to ensure we are contributing to meaningful research in the twenty-first century.     

黎曼和蒙特卡罗估计及其收敛问题

对MCMC方法及其收敛进行了简要回顾，利用黎曼和方法模拟解决了高维复杂积分的近似问题。然后设计了一种收敛诊断估计量，用它来保证得到的样本是收敛的，这就确保了近似积分的精度。最后给出一个实例。     

A Conditional Joint Modeling Approach for Locally Dependent Item Responses and Response Times

The assumption of conditional independence between the responses and the response times (RTs) for a given person is common in RT modeling. However, when the speed of a test taker is not constant, this assumption will be violated. In this article we propose a conditional joint model for item responses and RTs, which incorporates a covariance structure to explain the local dependency between speed and accuracy. To obtain information about the population of test takers, the new model was embedded in the hierarchical framework proposed by van der Linden ( 2007 ). A fully Bayesian approach using a straightforward Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampler was developed to estimate all parameters in the model. The deviance information criterion (DIC) and the Bayes factor (BF) were employed to compare the goodness of fit between the models with two different parameter structures. The Bayesian residual analysis method was also employed to evaluate the fit of the RT model. Based on the simulations, we conclude that (1) the new model noticeably improves the parameter recovery for both the item parameters and the examinees’ latent traits when the assumptions of conditional independence between the item responses and the RTs are relaxed and (2) the proposed MCMC sampler adequately estimates the model parameters. The applicability of our approach is illustrated with an empirical example, and the model fit indices indicated a preference for the new model.     

A Bayesian Approach to Multilevel Structural Equation Modeling With Continuous and Dichotomous Outcomes

Multilevel Structural equation models are most often estimated from a frequentist framework via maximum likelihood. However, as shown in this article, frequentist results are not always accurate. Alternatively, one can apply a Bayesian approach using Markov chain Monte Carlo estimation methods. This simulation study compared estimation quality using Bayesian and frequentist approaches in the context of a multilevel latent covariate model. Continuous and dichotomous variables were examined because it is not yet known how different types of outcomes—most notably categorical—affect parameter recovery in this modeling context. Within the Bayesian estimation framework, the impact of diffuse, weakly informative, and informative prior distributions were compared. Findings indicated that Bayesian estimation may be used to overcome convergence problems and improve parameter estimate bias. Results highlight the differences in estimation quality between dichotomous and continuous variable models and the importance of prior distribution choice for cluster-level random effects.     

Moderated Mediation Analysis Using Bayesian Methods

Conventionally, moderated mediation analysis is conducted through adding relevant interaction terms into a mediation model of interest. In this study, we illustrate how to conduct moderated mediation analysis by directly modeling the relation between the indirect effect components including a and b and the moderators, to permit easier specification and interpretation of moderated mediation. With this idea, we introduce a general moderated mediation model that can be used to model many different moderated mediation scenarios including the scenarios described in Preacher, Rucker, and Hayes (2007). Then we discuss how to estimate and test the conditional indirect effects and to test whether a mediation effect is moderated using Bayesian approaches. How to implement the estimation in both BUGS and Mplus is also discussed. Performance of Bayesian methods is evaluated and compared to that of frequentist methods including maximum likelihood (ML) with 1st-order and 2nd-order delta method standard errors and mL with bootstrap (percentile or bias-corrected confidence intervals) via a simulation study. The results show that Bayesian methods with diffuse (vague) priors implemented in both BUGS and Mplus yielded unbiased estimates, higher power than the ML methods with delta method standard errors, and the ML method with bootstrap percentile confidence intervals, and comparable power to the ML method with bootstrap bias-corrected confidence intervals. We also illustrate the application of these methods with the real data example used in Preacher et al. (2007). Advantages and limitations of applying Bayesian methods to moderated mediation analysis are also discussed.     

Complicating methodological transparency

A historical indicator of the quality, validity, and rigor of qualitative research has been the documentation and disclosure of the behind-the-scenes work of the researcher. In this paper, we use what we call methodological data as a tool to complicate the possibility and desirability of such transparency. Specifically, we draw on our disparate attempts to address calls for transparency about methodological processes in our respective dissertation studies in order to examine how novice researchers can explore transparency as a situated, ongoing, and philosophically informed series of decisions about how, when, and if to be transparent about our work. This work contributes to conversations about how qualitative researchers in education can understand, discuss, and teach qualitative inquiry while continuing to push the boundaries of the field.     

Bayesian Regularized Multivariate Generalized Latent Variable Models

We consider a multivariate generalized latent variable model to investigate the effects of observable and latent explanatory variables on multiple responses of interest. Various types of correlated responses, such as continuous, count, ordinal, and nominal variables, are considered in the regression. A generalized confirmatory factor analysis model that is capable of managing mixed-type data is proposed to characterize latent variables via correlated observed indicators. In addressing the complicated structure of the proposed model, we introduce continuous underlying measurements to provide a unified model framework for mixed-type data. We develop a multivariate version of the Bayesian adaptive least absolute shrinkage and selection operator procedure, which is implemented with a Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm in a full Bayesian context, to simultaneously conduct estimation and model selection. The empirical performance of the proposed methodology is demonstrated through a simulation study. An application of the proposed method to a study of adolescent substance abuse based on the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth is presented.     

Understanding Learning for Teaching

Educational researchers are concerned about the ways in which researcher identity can influence practice and findings for better or worse effect. However, writings which offer narratives, intended to instruct others in the ways in which the positioning and reflexivity of the researcher operates for better or worse, often present a view of identity as singular, fixed and stable. In this paper we trouble this view of identity as represented in the notion of inside/outside researchers. We reconsider a project in which we worked with a group of pupil researchers to investigate bullying in their school. We show how our identities multiplied and shifted throughout the project in ways that we can see more clearly in hindsight. We mobilize Zygmunt Bauman’s notion of ‘fluid identities’ and argue that the inside/outside binary may be politically helpful but also limiting of understandings of the real politic and experience of messy research practice in and with schools.     

Why do we need to employ Bayesian statistics and how can we employ it in studies of moral education?: With practical guidelines to use JASP for educators and researchers

In this article, we discuss the benefits of Bayesian statistics and how to utilize them in studies of moral education. To demonstrate concrete examples of the applications of Bayesian statistics to studies of moral education, we reanalyzed two data sets previously collected: one small data set collected from a moral educational intervention experiment, and one big data set from a large-scale Defining Issues Test-2 survey (DIT). The results suggest that Bayesian analysis of data sets collected from moral educational studies can provide additional useful statistical information, particularly that associated with the strength of evidence supporting alternative hypotheses, which has not been provided by the classical frequentist approach focusing on P-values. Finally, we introduce several practical guidelines pertaining to how to utilize Bayesian statistics, including the utilization of newly developed free statistical software, Jeffrey’s Amazing Statistics Program (JASP), and thresholding based on Bayes Factors (BF), to scholars in the field of moral education.     

The ‘post‐post period’ and environmental education research

Described as ‘postexperimental’ and of the ‘post‐post period,’ the current moment in social science research is typified by multivoiced texts, researcher reflexivity, cultural criticism, and experimental works; characteristics in keeping with poststructurally informed understandings of social science research as contingent, evolving and messy. However, many researchers concerned with environmental education continue within positivistic or postpositivistic traditions, relying on understandings of reality as something that is out there to be discovered or approximated. This article explores the methodological considerations of post‐informed research, seeking to contribute to discussions of how environmental education research might better take issues of representation, legitimation, and politics into account.     

A Seat at the Table: How the Work of Teaching Impacts Teachers as Policy Agents

Policy reflects and shapes society's beliefs about schools, teachers, children, learning, and society, as well as the power structures embedded in our communities and decision-making processes. Although teachers may be central to the implementation of education policy, they are marginal to the design of policy agendas and text, especially around issues of teaching and learning. Their absence in the policymaking process creates a disconnect between the goals and design of education policy and the actual lived challenges of implementation. In examining the dynamics in this critical disconnect, we address the following research questions: How do institutional norms and routines affect teachers' agency in the policymaking process? Following this research question is our action question: How do we support conditions that support teachers as policy agents? We draw on qualitative data from two sites (West Virginia and Wisconsin) where K–12 teachers partnered with university researchers in a range of capacity-building efforts. Analysis illustrates how teachers interact with certain institutional norms that make it hard to engage in policy design. Based on our findings, we discuss how a teacher–university partnership can better support the conditions that facilitate greater teacher agency in thinking, talking, and acting on policy.     

Subjective Priors for Item Response Models: Application of Elicitation by Design

Bayesian methods incorporate model parameter information prior to data collection. Eliciting information from content experts is an option, but has seen little implementation in Bayesian item response theory (IRT) modeling. This study aims to use ethical reasoning content experts to elicit prior information and incorporate this information into Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) estimation. A six‐step elicitation approach is followed, with relevant details at each stage for two IRT items parameters: difficulty and guessing. Results indicate that using content experts is the preferred approach, rather than noninformative priors, for both parameter types. The use of a noninformative prior for small samples provided dramatically different results when compared to results from content expert–elicited priors. The WAMBS (When to worry and how to Avoid the Misuse of Bayesian Statistics) checklist is used to aid in comparisons.     

随机波动率模型分析与应用

本文首先分析了金融时间序列中常用的随机波动率模型结构,介绍了马尔可夫链蒙特卡洛MCMC方法并采用基于MCMC模拟的贝叶斯分析对随机波动率模型的参数进行估计了,其次应用该模型对世界黄金价格指数时间序列的走势与波动进行分析,实证结果表明SV模型能较好的拟合金价走势并作出预测。     

Revisiting curriculum inquiry: the role of visual representations

Curriculum materials and knowledge about curricular purposes and structures are valuable tools that teachers often draw upon to organize instruction and facilitate student learning. Careful analysis of teachers’ curriculum implementation and the decision-making that undergirds their curriculum use is critical for fully understanding enactment. This paper compares how integrity analyses of implementation of curriculum materials and actor-oriented analysis of teachers’ curriculum use can help researchers, teacher educators, and curriculum designers interpret teachers’ decisions about what aspects of new materials to use and how to use such materials. Drawing on evidence from teacher interviews and observations, we compare two teachers’ enactments of a new elementary-level environmental biology unit. Our analyses of integrity point to differences in teachers’ adaptations with respect to their consistency with the purposes and structures of curriculum materials as construed by designers. By contrast, our actor-oriented analysis explain how the teachers’ different approaches to interpreting the goals and structures of the curriculum unit partly account for patterns in their enactment in ways that can inform refinements to materials and the design of professional development supports for teachers. In so doing, we show how implementation integrity and actor-oriented analyses offer complementary perspectives to inform curriculum research and development.     

Strategic process in universities: methodology development and information systems support

This paper aims to stress the potential use of executive support systems (ESS) in the formulation of university objectives and strategies. A strategic planning methodology based on different university experiences is proposed, along with an ESS that we have designed and developed to support the strategic process. We present the methodology and show how to put it into practice by using our application. Finally, we discuss some results obtained at the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, as well as the major obstacles and resistance raised both to the strategic planning and to the computerization of the process     

(Mis)Understanding Human Beings: Theory,Value, and Progress in Education Research

There is renewed interest in what can be called an experimentist approach to education research. The claim is that if researchers would focus on experiments and evidence-based policies and practices, irreversible progress in education can be achieved. This experimentist approach cannot provide the understanding of knowledge and human beings needed for meaningful progress in education. Lacking is adequate appreciation for the role of theory, particularly ethical and other philosophical theory. We especially need a theory of our human condition and a keen awareness for how some conceptions of scientific work can influence, and distort, our conceptions of human beings and worthwhile lives. As paradoxical as it might seem at first, to move ahead in education and our service to persons’ welfare, we need to look backward to revisit old truths.     

Education policy mobility: reimagining sustainability in neoliberal times

This paper is concerned with the twinning of sustainability with priorities of economic neoliberalization in education, and in particular via the mobility or diffusion of education policy. We discuss the literature on policy mobility as well as overview concerns regarding neoliberalism and education. The paper brings these analyses to bear in considering the uptake of sustainability in education policy. We ask to what extent sustainability as a vehicular idea may be twinning with processes of neoliberalization in education policy in ways that may undermine aspirations of, and action on, environmental sustainability. Toward the end of the paper, we draw on data from an empirical study to help elucidate how the analytic frames of policy mobility can inform our analyses of the potential concerns and possibilities of sustainability as a vehicular idea. In particular, we investigate how sustainability and related language have been adopted in the policies of Canadian post-secondary education institutions over time. The paper closes by suggesting the potential implications of the proceeding analyses for policymakers, practitioners, and researchers concerned with sustainability in education policy.     

将PISA应用于我国义务教育质量监测不可无视的两个问题

PISA2009上海项目,开启了用PISA监测我国义务教育质量的先河。继而有关学者主张,借鉴PISA建构我国的义务教育质量监测体系,以提供中国同世界上其他国家或地区间可比较的教育质量指标,从而为国家教育政策的制定和调整提供依据。然而,当我们将PISA移植于中国义务教育质量监测,并将其结果在国际上进行比较的时候,不可无视两个问题:一是学生生存质量问题;二是教育效率问题。前者关注:学生在教育过程中幸福感如何、承受的压力有多强、失去了多少原本不该失去的东西;后者关注:某一PISA成绩的取得,消耗了多少劳动,花费了多长时间。     

Investigating science teacher educator identity through the politics of domestication and critical positional praxis

The focus on identity in the field of teaching and learning continues to grow, especially when it concerns equitable outcomes for students. While most attention is placed on students' identities and increasingly those of teachers, lesser addressed are the identities of the teacher educators and researchers broaching the issue of identity. Additionally, identity research is not often linked to relationships between self, others, and transformative action. We recognize these as gaps to be addressed and offer critical positional praxis (CPP) as a response. CPP is the public manifestation of the insights gained through our sense of identity and reflexivity. More specifically, CPP is the actions (or inactions) that express who we are in response to an event in any given social context—especially oppressive ones. In this article, we draw from our own critical autoethnographies, as a context for putting CPP into practice in identity research. Our collective analysis of these critical autoethnographies revealed how our identity development was inseparable from the ways in which we have each resisted the politics of domestication. Our autoethnographies further point to the role of dissent as central to our experiences of becoming critical science teacher educators committed to equity, diversity, and anti-racism in education. We draw from this analysis to offer recommendations for how identity and positionality can move beyond theoretical constructs toward transformative personal and collective change in science education.