In this newly revised edition of Understanding Research in Early Education, Margaret Clark demonstrates the continuing relevance of research in the homes of young children and in preschool units. Through rigorous yet understandable language, the text stresses the importance of research, acknowledging how easy it can be, amidst the change and flood of documents on early education and care, to overlook the insights to be gained from past research. The author draws on her own studies, and those of others, to illustrate how to avoid common pitfalls, ask the right questions to inform students' research projects, and critically apply findings in the classroom or nursery. The book is one of the few texts for students to bring research alive, analysing key research to consider its limitations and the extent to which results are relevant to policy and practice. Without requiring any prior expertise in research and research methodologies, the third edition will prove invaluable for undergraduate and postgraduate students taking courses in early years' education, and practitioners undertaking continuing professional development. New content includes: fully revised chapters, an updated reference list, and a new chapter discussing current research on baseline assessment.

This volume includes contributions from experts such as Gil Musolf, Michael Katovich, Joseph Kotarba, Norbert Wiley, Alina Pop, Marco Marzano, John Pruit, Amanda Pruit, Carol Rambo, Norman Conti, Laura Rosenberg, Krzysztof Konecki, Erick Laming, Christopher J. Schneider, Stacey Hannem, Robert Perinbanayagam, Veronica Manlow, and Christopher Ferree to provide a robust and interdisciplinary critique of contemporary culture. For its breadth and depth of research, this volume of Studies in Symbolic Interaction is essential reading for researchers and students across the social sciences interested in current symbolic interactionist thought and contemporary readings of social situations.

This book explores how public opinion is used to design, monitor and evaluate government programmes in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. Using information collected from the media and from international practitioners in the public opinion field, as well as interviews in each of the 4 countries, the author describes how views of public opinion and governance differ significantly between elites and the general public. Bennett argues that elites generally risk more by allowing the creation of new data, fearing that its analysis may become public and create communications and political problems of various kinds. The book finds evidence that recent conservative governments in several countries are changing their perspective on the use of public opinion, and that conventional public opinion studies are facing challenges from the availability of other kinds of information and new technologies. This book is a hugely valuable contribution to a hitherto little explored field and will appeal to academics and practitioners alike.

This book brings together a diverse, international array of contributors to explore the topics of news "quality" in the online age and the relationships between news organizations and enormously influential digital platforms such as Facebook, Google, and Twitter. Covering topics ranging from internet incivility, crowdsourcing, and YouTube politics to regulations, algorithms, and AI, this book draws the key distinction between the news that facilitates democracy from news that undermines it. For students and scholars as well as journalists, policymakers, and media commentators, this important work engages a wide range of methodological and theoretical perspectives to define the key concept of "quality" in the news media.

This book makes valuable theoretical, empirical, and methodological contributions to the study of overseas doctoral students' cross-cultural adaptation. Focusing on Australia, one of the top three destinations for Chinese students, this book seeks to understand how Chinese doctoral students perceive their lived experience of adapting to the academic and research environment at Australian universities. The book presents an innovative data collection chiefly based on interviews. It probes into Chinese doctoral students' emic perception of their cross-cultural adaptation from a human development perspective and in three main phrases: how motivated and prepared they are for their overseas stay (planning), how they experience their adaptation as active agents (implementing), and how they evaluate their overseas doctoral journey after the fact (reflecting). Empirically speaking, its findings can help bolster the effectiveness of cross-cultural adaptation and that of the internationalisation of doctoral education. Methodologically speaking, it combines popular techniques and underused instruments such as graphics and maps to offer an in-depth portrait of the issue. Given its content, the book is primarily intended for researchers in cultural studies and practitioners in international education, or in a broader sense for anyone who has a keen interest in how individuals navigate the learning trajectory and construe meanings in unfamiliar academic and socio-cultural settings. Though the book focuses on Australia as a case study, its findings are equally applicable to other contexts.

This book focuses on the emotional hazards of conducting fieldwork about or within contexts of violence and provides a forum for field-based researchers to tell their stories. Increasingly novice and seasoned ethnographers alike, whether by choice or chance, are working in situations where multidimensional forms of violence, conflict and war are facets of everyday life. The volume engages with the methodological and ethical issues involved and features a range of expressive writings that reveal personal consequences and dilemmas. The contributors use their emotions, their scars, outrage and sadness alongside their hopes and resilience to give voice to that which is often silenced, to make visible the entanglements of fieldwork and its lingering vulnerabilities. The book brings to the fore the lived experiences of researchers and their interlocutors alike with the hope of fostering communities of care. It will be valuable reading for anthropologists and those from other disciplines who are embarking on ethnographic fieldwork and conducting qualitative empirical research.

Methodological Concepts: A Critical Guide clarifies many key terms and issues in social research methodology. It outlines the conventional meanings of these terms, but also addresses their contentious character. The aim is to offer interpretations of them that provide a coherent conception of the nature of social science. This book is premised on the idea that more clarity about the meaning of major methodological concepts is essential, and that the disagreements which pervade the field must be addressed. Numerous key terms are discussed across 13 chapters, including 'methodology', 'method', 'inquiry', 'research', 'science', 'truth', 'fact', 'rigour', 'bias', 'objectivity', 'data', 'evidence', 'induction', 'deduction', 'abduction', 'understanding', 'explanation', 'reflexivity', 'triangulation', 'theory', and 'researcher integrity'. These concepts have been implicated in fundamental divisions among social scientists, exemplified by the 'paradigm wars' of the past few decades. The chapters of this book provide an overview of the various meanings given to these terms, whilst also offering distinctive interpretations designed to provide a sound basis for social research. Methodological Concepts: A Critical Guide will be of great use to any student or researcher working in the social sciences.

Biophysical Measurement in Experimental Social Science Research is an ideal primer for the experimental social scientist wishing to update their knowledge and skillset in the area of laboratory-based biophysical measurement. Many behavioral laboratories across the globe have acquired increasingly sophisticated biophysical measurement equipment, sometimes for particular research projects or for financial or institutional reasons. Yet the expertise required to use this technology and integrate the measures it can generate on human subjects into successful social science research endeavors is often scarce and concentrated amongst a small minority of researchers. This book aims to open the door to wider and more productive use of biophysical measurement in laboratory-based experimental social science research. Suitable for doctoral students through to established researchers, the volume presents examples of the successful integration of biophysical measures into analyses of human behavior, discussions of the academic and practical limitations of laboratory-based biophysical measurement, and hands-on guidance about how different biophysical measurement devices are used. A foreword and concluding chapters comprehensively synthesize and compare biophysical measurement options, address academic, ethical and practical matters, and address the broader historical and scientific context. Research chapters demonstrate the academic potential of biophysical measurement ranging fully across galvanic skin response, heart rate monitoring, eye tracking and direct neurological measurements. An extended Appendix showcases specific examples of device adoption in experimental social science lab settings.

This book presents different research designs, their respective purposes and merits as well as their underlying assumptions. Research designs are characterised by a certain combination of knowledge aims and strategies for data production. An adequate design is the key to carrying out a successful research project. Nevertheless, the literature on design is scarce, compared to the literature on methods. This book clarifies the basic distinction between variable-oriented designs and case designs, and proceeds to integrated, comparative and intervention-oriented designs. A step-by-step guide to the design process and the choices to make is also included. The book's clear style makes it an excellent guide for master students and PhD students doing their first research exercises, while it is also useful for more experienced researchers who want to broaden their design repertoire and keep up to recent innovations in the field of research design.

Co-authored by an international team of experts across disciplines, this important book is one of the first to demonstrate the enormous benefit creative methods offer for education research. You do not have to be an artist to be creative, and the book encourages students, researchers and practitioners to discover and consider new ways to explore the field of education. It illustrates how using creative methods, such as poetic inquiry, comics, theatre and animation, can support learning and illuminate participation and engagement. Bridging academia and practice, the book offers: * practical advice and tips on how to use creative methods in education research; * numerous case studies from around the world providing real-life examples of creative research methods in education practice; * reflective discussion questions to support learning.

Topics of complex system physics and their interdisciplinary applications to different problems in seismology, biology, economy, sociology, energy and nanotechnology are covered in this new work from renowned experts in their fields. Inparticular, contributed papers contain original results on network science, earthquake dynamics, econophysics, sociophysics, nanoscience and biological physics. Most of the papers use interdisciplinary approaches based on statistical physics, quantum physics and other topics of complex system physics.Papers on econophysics and sociophysics are focussed on societal aspects of physics such as, opinion dynamics, public debates and financial and economic stability. This work will be of interest to statistical physicists, economists, biologists, seismologists and all scientists working in interdisciplinary topics of complexity."

This unique book comprehensively covers the evolving field of transversality, globalization and education, and presents creative, research-based thought experiments that seek to unravel the forces of globalization impacting education. Pursuing various approaches to and uses of transversality, with a focus on the ideas of Felix Guattari, it is the only book of its kind. Specifically, it examines the influence of Guattari at the forefront of educational research that addresses, enhances and sets free activist micro-perspectives, which can counter macro-global movements, such as capitalism and climate change. This book is a global education research text that includes perspectives from four continents, providing a balanced and significant work on globalization in education.

Child-Parent Research Reimagined challenges the field to explore the meaning making experiences and the methodological and ethical challenges that come to the fore when researchers engage in research with their child, grandchild, or other relative. As scholars in and beyond the field of education grapple with ways that youth make meaning with digital and nondigital resources and practices, this edited volume offers insights into nuanced learning that is highly contextualized and textured while also (re)initiating important methodological and epistemological conversations about research that seeks to flatten traditional hierarchies, honor youth voices, and co-investigate facets of youth meaning making. Contributors are (in alphabetical order): Charlotte Abrams, Sandra Schamroth Abrams, Kathleen M. Alley, Bill Cope, Mary Kalantzis, Molly Kurpis, Linda Laidlaw, Guy Merchant, Daniel Ness, Eric Ness, "E." O'Keefe, Joanne O'Mara, Anthony J. Onwuegbuzie, Sarah Prestridge, Lourdes M. Rivera, Dahlia Rivera-Larkin, Nora Rivera-Larkin, Alaina Roach O'Keefe, Mary Beth Schaefer, Cassandra R. Skrobot, and Bogum Yoon.

This volume presents a comprehensive overview of methodological issues and empirical methods of practice-oriented research. It examines questions regarding the scope and boundaries of practice-oriented approaches and practice theory. It discusses the potential advantages and disadvantages of the diversity resulting from the use of these approaches, as well as method and methodology-related issues. The specific questions explored in this volume are: What consequences are linked to the application of a praxeological perspective in empirical research when it comes to the choice of methods? Is there such a thing as an ideal path to follow in praxeological empirical research? What relationship is there between qualitative and quantitative approaches? What differentiates practice-based social research from other perspectives and approaches such as discourse analysis or hermeneutics? The contributions in this book discuss these questions either from a methodological point of view or from a reflective perspective on empirical research practices.

This detailed textbook critically examines methods used in sociolinguistc studies, including the ways in which the categories of age, gender, ethnicity and social class have been employed to chart language variation. It discusses the nature of data and encourages students to examine the evidence with a more critical eye.

Quantitative Anthropology: A Workbook contributes an anthropological perspective to quantitative methods. The book's authors address characteristics of quantitative data, entering and manipulating data in SPSS, graphical displays, distributions and measures of central tendency and dispersion, and including hypothesis testing with both parametric and nonparametric statistical tests. Increasingly complex exercises build on cumulative learning from chapter to chapter and stress the application of methods beyond coursework. The focus of the manual is on univariate statistical analysis, and the book is written to be accessible to higher level undergraduate students and graduate students in all fields of anthropology.

Straightforward, clear, and applied, this book will give you the theoretical and practical basis you need to apply data analysis techniques to real data. Combining key statistical concepts with detailed technical advice, it addresses common themes and problems presented by real research, and shows you how to adjust your techniques and apply your statistical knowledge to a range of datasets. It also embeds code and software output throughout and is supported by online resources to enable practice and safe experimentation. The book includes: * Original case studies and data sets * Practical exercises and lists of commands for each chapter * Downloadable Stata programmes created to work alongside chapters * A wide range of detailed applications using Stata * Step-by-step guidance on writing the relevant code. This is the perfect text for anyone doing statistical research in the social sciences getting started using Stata for data analysis.

This book focuses on the effects of information policy. While information policy studies often consider the ideology underlying policy, the policy process, the stakeholders and players in that process, and the nature of the outcomes of policy development, there have been few studies that focus on the ultimate effects of information policy. This book looks at effects from two perspectives. First, it examines the impact of government-wide information policies on a specific government agency in terms of its dissemination policies for the information it provides. Secondly, the effects of the ensuing agency information policies on social science research are examined. The government-wide policies of interest here are cost-recovery and restraint initiatives imposed by the Canadian federal government in the mid-1980s. The policy statements specifically identified government information as an area in which increased revenues could be generated. Such de facto information policies can have a wide effect on government information production and dissemination. In this book, the history and background of the policies is considered and the effects were empirically examined using multiple methods of analysis. The period covered is mid-1980s through mid-1990s. An epilogue chapter provides information on recent policy developments in Canada and the continuing effects of the policies of the 1980s.

This book is open access under a CC BY-NC 2.5 license. This book describes the extensive contributions made toward the advancement of human assessment by scientists from one of the world's leading research institutions, Educational Testing Service. The book's four major sections detail research and development in measurement and statistics, education policy analysis and evaluation, scientific psychology, and validity. Many of the developments presented have become de-facto standards in educational and psychological measurement, including in item response theory (IRT), linking and equating, differential item functioning (DIF), and educational surveys like the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the Programme of international Student Assessment (PISA), the Progress of International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) and the Trends in Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). In addition to its comprehensive coverage of contributions to the theory and methodology of educational and psychological measurement and statistics, the book gives significant attention to ETS work in cognitive, personality, developmental, and social psychology, and to education policy analysis and program evaluation. The chapter authors are long-standing experts who provide broad coverage and thoughtful insights that build upon decades of experience in research and best practices for measurement, evaluation, scientific psychology, and education policy analysis. Opening with a chapter on the genesis of ETS and closing with a synthesis of the enormously diverse set of contributions made over its 70-year history, the book is a useful resource for all interested in the improvement of human assessment.

This book brings together a diverse, international array of contributors to explore the topics of news "quality" in the online age and the relationships between news organizations and enormously influential digital platforms such as Facebook, Google, and Twitter. Covering topics ranging from internet incivility, crowdsourcing, and YouTube politics to regulations, algorithms, and AI, this book draws the key distinction between the news that facilitates democracy from news that undermines it. For students and scholars as well as journalists, policymakers, and media commentators, this important work engages a wide range of methodological and theoretical perspectives to define the key concept of "quality" in the news media.

The "Statistical Handbook on Technology" is the first easy-to-use resource to provide the general reader with comprehensive statistical information on how technology affects all areas of our lives. More than 250 charts, tables, and graphs are featured, making it easy for users to quickly find answers to such questions as: How has the number of ATM transactions per month grown since 1988? What percentage of U.S. public libraries offers access to the Internet? How many CD players have been sold in the U.S. since 1983? What is the most prescribed drug? What is the average age of the U.S. aviation fleet? Each of the book's 13 chapters includes a short essay introducing the topic and describing the statistics that follow. The Handbook also provides insightful forecasts, information that is normally difficult to find.

This substantially revised text provides a comprehensive, highly accessible, and student friendly introduction to the principles, concepts, and methods currently used in educational research. This text provides a balanced combination of quantitative and qualitative methods and enables students to master skills in reading, understanding, critiquing, and conducting research. Many examples and article excerpts are used throughout the text to demonstrate and highlight best practices in educational research. Evidence-based inquiry is emphasized in two ways: (1) Introductory chapters focus on the added importance of data driven decision-making, (2) Methodological chapters provide explicit guidelines for conducting empirical studies.

This volume showcases selected conference papers addressing the sustainable future of ASEAN from the perspectives of business and social science disciplines. In addressing the 17 Sustainable Developments Goals (SDGs) envisioned by the United Nations in the domains of environment, health and well-being, posing potential means of reducing inequalities globally, the authors target specific issues and challenges confronting the fast-growing region of ASEAN and present suggestions for co-operation and commitment from governments, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and society at large, in line with the ASEAN Vision 2020. Papers are selected from the 3rd International Conference on the Future of ASEAN (ICoFA) 2019, organised by Universiti Teknologi MARA in Malaysia, whose conference theme "Charting the Sustainable Future of ASEAN" enables intellectual discourse on sustainability issues from business and the social sciences, as well as science and technology. The selection of papers is published in two volumes, comprising scholarly and practical insights into sustainability in ASEAN. This first volume of papers from business and social science scholars will be of interest to researchers and policymakers interested in sustainability developments in the ASEAN region.

This volume narrates and shares the often-unheard voices of students, parents, and educators during the COVID-19 pandemic. Through close analysis of their lived experiences, the book identifies key patterns, pitfalls, and lessons learnt from pandemic education. Drawing on contributions from all levels of the US education system, the book situates these myriad voices and perspectives within a prismatic theory framework in order to recognise how these views and experiences interconnect. Detailed narrative and phenomenological analysis also call attention to patterns of inequality, reduced social and emotional well-being, pressures on parents, and the role of communication, flexibility, and teacher-led innovation. Chapters are interchanged with interludes that showcase a lyrical and authentic approach to understanding the multiplicity of experience in the text. Providing a valuable contribution to the contemporary field of pandemic education research, this volume will be of interest to researchers, academics, and educators with an interest in the sociology of education, online teaching and eLearning, and those involved with the digitalization of education at all levels. Those more broadly interested in educational research methods and the effects of home-schooling will also benefit.

It sounds like a paradox: How do you engage in autoethnography collaboratively? Heewon Chang, Faith Ngunjiri, and Kathy-Ann Hernandez break new ground on this blossoming new array of research models, collectively labeled Collaborative Autoethnography. Their book serves as a practical guide by providing you with a variety of data collection, analytic, and writing techniques to conduct collaborative projects. It also answers your questions about the bigger picture: What advantages does a collaborative approach offer to autoethnography? What are some of the methodological, ethical, and interpersonal challenges you'll encounter along the way? Model collaborative autoethnographies and writing prompts are included in the appendixes. This exceptional, in-depth resource will help you explore this exciting new frontier in qualitative methods.