'Noisy, fallible and biased though it be' (on the Vagaries of Educational Research)

Scholarship in education beyond school has developed largely outside university departments of education, and has rarely engaged systematically with the study of education in schools. The paper concentrates on three areas: adult education, higher education, and further education. The development of the extra-mural tradition meant that adult education was less an object of scholarly study than a means of spreading scholarship to the wider population, with important exceptions such as historical studies. Since the 1970s, the volume of research and postgraduate education in adult education in British universities has grown considerably. The study of higher education was marginal until the 1960s; its subsequent development was relatively slow until the 1990s, when the quality of university teaching came under wider external scrutiny. The study of further education and vocational training is characterised by disciplinary fragmentation, with much activity taking place in departments of psychology, economics, sociology and management, as well as in those former polytechnics that specialised in training further education teachers. The rise of integrative concepts such as lifelong learning suggest greater potential for cross-disciplinary scholarship that can engage the diverse body of those interested in teaching and research about this field.     

Advice to doctoral guidance committees from alumni at two universities

This investigation provided a comparative analysis of results of follow-up studies of graduates of doctoral programs at Ohio State and Michigan State universities. The same questionnaire survey and similar sampling procedures were used in both settings. The survey considered alumni perceptions of guidance committee activities, course work, comprehensive examinations, and dissertations. Most findings were consistent across both institutions (e.g., about one-fifth of the graduates from both universities wish they had taken more course work in research methodology). However, some striking contrasts were also found (e.g., the proportion of graduates who published articles based on their dissertations was 40% at one university and 23% at the other). The report offers recommendations for doctoral guidance committees suggested by the findings.     

The reading–science learning–writing connection: Breakthroughs,barriers, and promises

This article establishes a broad framework from which to interpret and evaluate the reading–science learning–writing connection. The presentation of breakthroughs, barriers, and promises is intended to outline the established links between, to identify current bottlenecks in thinking about, and to highlight productive inquiries into, print-based languages and scientific understanding. The ideas presented come from various disciplines connected to science education. The ideas are meant to be informative, provocative, integrative, supportive, and without hidden agenda.     

Teaching the design and interpretation of graphs through computer-aided graphical data analysis

Graphs are one of the primary means of exploration and communication in the practice of science, but students in science laboratories are customarily taught only the low-level mechanics of constructing a single kind of graph when given a table of information. The use of a microcomputer can relieve the drudgery of plotting, allowing students to pursue higher-level issues in the design and interpretation of graphs through repeated “thought experiments.” We introduced computer-assisted graphical data analysis to inner-city high school students with weak math and science backgrounds, emphasizing the dynamic manipulation of various kinds of graphs to answer specific questions. Drawing on extensive recordings and classroom observations, we describe examples of the performance of these students on open-ended problem-solving tasks in which graphs can be used to arrive at meaningful answers to applied data analysis problems.     

College and university requirements for teachers of the deaf at the undergraduate level: a twenty-year comparison

College and university requirements for undergraduate deaf education teacher preparation programs from 1986 and 2006 were compared. Thirty percent fewer undergraduate programs were in existence in 2006 than in 1986. Compared to programs in the 1986-1987 academic year, programs in 2006-2007 placed less emphasis on course work related to speech and hearing and more emphasis on the development of sign language skills. These findings are discussed in relation to the increasing probability that future employment for program graduates will be in itinerant and resource placements within public schools with children whose hearing losses are less severe than those of children in the past.     

Discriminated avoidance vs classical conditioning: A two-phase model analysis

The acquisition of discriminated avoidance and classically conditioned leg flexions in dogs and of discriminated avoidance leg flexion in cats was examined via a two-phase model of conditioning. Classically conditioned Ss uniformly required two operators during Phase 2, with the limit of the CR operator being greater than that of the CR operator. Not all avoidance-trained Ss required two operators during Phase 2, but those who did also had a higher CR than CR operator limit. The CR operator limit was higher for avoidance than for classical training, while the change rate was greater for classical training. The avoidance behavior of cats paralleled that of the dogs. It was concluded that the data generally conformed to views of Hilgard and Marquis and, more recently, of Bolles, but were contrary to what would be expected from two-factor theory.     

Making departmental changes through action research,based on adult learning principles

Action research was used as a means of introducing adult learning principles into the teaching of an optometry department. The department took as an overall development theme the move from teacher-directed to leamer-directed activities. Pilot studies were used as a mechanism for trialling particular innovations. Lessons learnt from the pilot studies are shared with the remainder of the department for incorporation into other subjects, thus evolving a mechanism for departmental change. The paper shows how change occurred by reporting briefly two pilot studies as examples. The first used group project teams to prepare class presentations for specified topics. Some novel presentation methods were used by the student teams. Peer assessment was introduced into this subject in the second cycle of the pilot study as a result of feedback from the first cycle. The second pilot study introduced active learning methods in place of lectures.