Educational Researcher current issue

Learning From Our Differences: A Dialogue Across Perspectives on Quality in Education Research

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 13:29:03 PDT

The dialogue re-presented in this article is intended to foster mutual engagement—and opportunity for learning—across different perspectives on research within the education research community. Participants in the dialogue each addressed the following questions: (1) What are the touchstones by which you judge quality or rigor in education research (for a single study, a set of studies, or a "field" or community of researchers in dialogue)? What is your chief concern or fear that the touchstones guard against? (2) Where do you see challenges to your perspective in the perspectives of other members of the panel? How might your perspective evolve to respond to those challenges? Given all of this, what are the implications for the preparation of education researchers? Opening and closing comments set the dialogue in historical context, highlight issues raised, and suggest next steps for collaborative learning from the diversity of perspectives in our field.

Sharpening Our Focus in Measuring Classroom Instruction

Douglas, K. — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 13:29:03 PDT

This commentary highlights convergent themes from four articles in the March 2009 issue of Educational Researcher on measuring classroom instruction. Classroom instruction is a complex enterprise that occurs at the intersection of teachers, students, and texts within the surrounding classroom, school, and community environments. Progress in studying the complexity of classroom instruction on a large scale relies on our ability to pose research questions at the appropriate levels of analysis and to attempt to answer the questions using rigorous methods. These articles contribute to this task by sharing theoretical and practical viewpoints based on systematic programs of mixed methods research. The value of this body of research is reinforced through evidence of its impact on teaching practices and student learning.

The Cultural Practice of Reading and the Standardized Assessment of Reading Instruction: When Incommensurate Worlds Collide

Smagorinsky, P. — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 13:29:03 PDT

This article critiques the articles by Connor et al., Croninger and Valli, Pianta and Hamre, and Rowan and Correnti, which appeared in the March 2009 issue of Educational Researcher, by taking a cultural-historical perspective on reading and reading instruction. In this paradigm a number of those authors’ assumptions are seen as questionable, including the beliefs about reading that it is a self-evident construct, that it is a discrete act, and that it is an acultural act. The author of this critique presents evidence that challenges each of these assumptions and argues that by accepting them, the authors of the critiqued articles institute an order that values the system above relational aspects of schooling and teachers’ informed decision making.

EduPolitical Research: Reading Between the Lines

Willis, A. I. — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 13:29:03 PDT

This article presents a counternarrative informed by personal, critical, and qualitative perspectives, written in response to articles on effective classroom literacy instruction for improved academic performance published in March 2009 in Educational Researcher. Classroom literacy instruction is a complex undertaking that must include an understanding of local communities, schools, and classroom contexts, especially in culturally and linguistically diverse and low-income schools. Edupolitical research refers to the intersection of education research and federal intervention that informs education policy. A way out of the quicksand of unresolved debates over epistemology, pedagogy, and methodological and analytical approaches to effective classroom literacy instruction, teacher–student interactions, and student performance is a collaborative effort to create dense theories of instruction informed by a broad body of knowledge.

Back to the Future: Contrasting Scientific Styles in Understanding Reading

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 13:29:03 PDT

In this rejoinder to Willis, Smagorinsky, and Douglas (this issue of Educational Researcher), the authors discuss how many of the points raised by Willis and Smagorinsky regarding their original article, which appeared in the March 2009 issue of Educational Researcher, are concerned less with the methods themselves than with different styles of science. The authors of this rejoinder examine their differing styles of science, using Stanovich’s 2003 framework, and call for consilience and the understanding that multiple perspectives and methods are needed to solve the important and perplexing problems that students and teachers will face in the 21st century.

Mixing It Up About Methods

Croninger, R. G., Valli, L. — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 13:29:03 PDT

The authors respond to the commentaries (this issue of Educational Researcher) on a series of articles (in the March 2009 issue of Educational Researcher) that discuss the challenges associated with measuring reading instruction. The authors argue that the teaching of reading is a complex, multifaceted phenomenon best studied through a variety of overlapping and complementary methods, quantitative and qualitative. They describe how they put this belief into practice in their longitudinal study of reading and mathematics instruction, and they use other articles derived from that study to demonstrate how a mixed methods research design can enhance our understanding of instructional practices and aspects of the social and cultural contexts that influence those practices. They argue against a return to the paradigm wars that plagued education research during the 1980s.

A Lot of Students and Their Teachers Need Support: Using a Common Framework to Observe Teacher Practices Might Help

Pianta, R. C., Hamre, B. K. — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 13:29:03 PDT

The authors take the opportunity to respond to the commentaries (this issue of Educational Researcher) that were written regarding their article (in the March 2009 issue of Educational Researcher) summarizing the conceptual and empirical basis for using standardized approaches to observing teachers’ practices in classrooms and the potential that such approaches have for addressing some concerns about youngsters’ early literacy development. In this response, their intent is to clarify what appear to be points of misunderstanding and to add some details that could be helpful in interpreting their earlier article. They do not use citations for their assertions; the points made in this response requiring such documentation are made in the original article and are cited there, Interested readers can pursue those references.

Measuring Reading Instruction With Teacher Logs

Rowan, B., Correnti, R. — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 13:29:03 PDT

The authors argue that the criticisms of their earlier article on teacher logs (Educational Researcher, March 2009) by Smagorinsky and Willis (this issue of Educational Researcher) do not address, much less undermine, the evidence they presented as part of their validation argument about the teacher logs. Moreover, they argue that their method for studying classrooms is not nearly as incommensurate with Smagorinsky’s and Willis’s methods as those authors’ arguments seem to imply. The authors of this rejoinder see the main differences between themselves and their critics as being around the notion of "consequential" validity, an issue they discuss at the end of this article.

From the Desk of the President: Expanding Our Research Horizons

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 13:29:03 PDT

AERA Undergraduate Student Education Research Training Workshop: 2010 AERA Annual Meeting, Denver, Call for Applications, Deadline: December 15, 2009

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 13:29:03 PDT

Connecting Education Research to Policy: Summer Institute Convened by AERA and Foundation for Child Development

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 13:29:03 PDT

2010 Reports From AERA and Division Nominating Committees

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 13:29:03 PDT

Calls for Postdoctoral and Minority Dissertation Fellowships

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 13:29:03 PDT

Aera Grants Program: Training Opportunities

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 13:29:03 PDT

Council Minutes, June 26-27, 2009

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 13:29:03 PDT

Classifieds

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 13:29:03 PDT