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Background: Home-based care workers mainly work alone in the patient's home. They encounter a diverse patient population with complex health issues. This inevitably leads to several ethical challenges., Aim: The aim is to gain insight into ethical challenges related to patient autonomy in home-based care and how home-based care staff handle such challenges., Research Design: The study is based on a 9-month fieldwork, including participant observation and interviews in home-based care. Data were analysed with a thematic analysis approach., Participants and Research Context: The study took place within home-based care in three municipalities in Eastern Norway, with six staff members as key informants., Ethical Considerations: The Norwegian Agency for Shared Services in Education and Research evaluated the study. All participants were competent to consent and signed an informed consent form., Findings: A main challenge was that staff found it difficult to respect the patient's autonomy while at the same time practicing appropriate care. We found two main themes: Autonomy and risk in tension; and strategies to balance autonomy and risk. These were explicated in four sub-themes: Refusing and resisting care; when choosing to live at home becomes risky; sweet-talking and coaxing; and building trust over time. Staff's threshold for considering the use of coercion appeared to be high., Conclusions: Arguably, home-based care staff need improved knowledge of coercion and the legislation regulating it. There is also a need for arenas for ethics reflection and building of competence in balancing ethical values in recurrent ethical problems., Competing Interests: Declaration of conflicting interestsThe author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Increasingly, the broader public, media and policymakers are looking to qualitative research to provide answers to our most pressing social questions. While an exciting and perhaps overdue moment for qualitative researchers, it is also a time when the method is coming under increasing scrutiny for a lack of reliability and transparency. The question of how to assess the quality of qualitative research is therefore paramount, but the field still lacks clear standards to evaluate qualitative work. In their new book, "Qualitative Literacy," Mario Luis Small and Jessica McCrory Calarco aim to fill this gap. I argue that "Qualitative Literacy" offers a compelling set of standards for consumers to assess whether an in-depth interview or participant observation was of sufficient quality and, to an extent, whether sufficient time was spent in the field. However, by ignoring the vital importance of employing systematic, well-justified, and transparent sampling strategies, the implication is that such essential criteria can be ignored, undermining the potential contribution of qualitative research to a more cumulative creation of scientific knowledge.

Taking a sociological view, we can investigate the empirical consequences of variations in the rhetoric of sociological methodology. The standards advocated in Qualitative Literacy divide communities of qualitative researchers, as they are not explicitly connected to an understanding of social ontology, unlike previous qualitative methodologies; they continue the long-growing segregation of the rhetorical worlds of qualitative and quantitative research methodology; and they draw attention to the personal competencies of the researcher. I compare a rhetoric of qualitative methodology that: derives evaluation criteria from perspectives on social ontology that have been developing progressively since the early twentieth century; applies the discipline-wide evaluation criteria of reactivity, reliability, representativeness, and replicability; and asks evaluators to focus on the adequacy of the textual depiction of research subjects.

Participant observation (PO) is an important method of data collection used in a variety of research methodologies. PO can inform theory development by providing understanding of participants' behaviors and the contexts that influence their behaviors. Because theory development is important in grounded theory studies, we emphasize theoretical contributions of PO while interrogating the challenges of using PO, in particular, attending to informed consent. We use the exemplar of a mid-range theory about nursing practice with hospitalized older adults to highlight contributions of PO to category development. While acknowledging theoretical contributions, we explore challenges entailed in observations where consenting participants interact with vulnerable patients and a changing cast of health care professionals in dynamic contexts. Reflexivity about interactions with vulnerable individuals, as well as other actions to avoid compromising voluntary consent, enhances contributions of PO., (© The Author(s) 2015.)

In this article, we examine the process of conducting community-based research within graduate coursework, discussing and analyzing student reflective narratives on various aspects of the research process as a way of providing insight into the challenges, dilemmas, and joys entailed in conducting community-based qualitative research. In particular, we focus on the process of gaining entry into a research site; negotiating one's role as a researcher, and how researchers can be observant participants rather than just participant observers; and building reciprocal and collaborative relationships with participants. We also explore how our experiences in the community helped us challenge pejorative stereotypes about low-income communities and communities of color and lead to expanded views of the role of researchers within community contexts, as well as more nuanced and critical notions of researcher reflexivity that consider how researchers themselves are implicated in the issues and contexts that they study. We articulate the notion of dialogic reflexivity, which calls attention to how reflexivity involves on-going and collective refection and discussion with research team members and community members.

The purpose of this study was to examine the use of the Social networking site "Facebook" in "recreational leadership course" as an educational tool to facilitate the learning environment for sport management students. In this study qualitative research design and action research approach (emancipating/enhancing/critical science mode) were used. This research was based on the "by doing-experiencing" concept and focused on the usage of a Facebook group (as a closed group between students-lecturer/student-student) and on sharing course related topics inside and outside of the class under the supervision of the lecturer. The research was carried out with a total of 31 university students who participated in a "recreational leadership" elective course during the fall semester of 2015-2016. The data was collected both from the evaluation notes which were kept by the students at the end of the semester, and from observation notes of the researcher. According to the results based on the analysis of the evaluation notes of the students and the observation notes of the lecturer it appeared that "Facebook" as an educational tool in "recreational leadership course" was perceived mostly positive by students and the lecturer. In addition, according to the students' evaluation notes, four themes were established: 1. Personal Development, 2. Emotional Development, 3. Performance Development and 4. Cognitive Development. On the other hand, the analysis of the notes of the lecturer revealed four main themes as gains: 1. Improving the Quality of Class Management, 2. Systematic Application of Technology, 3. Improving the Quality of Education/Students, and 4. Learning by doing.

The purpose of this study was to examine the features of the peer culture that a group of preschoolers created in their classroom in the province of Kahramanmaras, Turkey. An ethnographic approach was adopted in this study to obtain an in-depth understanding of children's peer interactions. The data were collected through variety of data collection methods such as participant observation, interviews, document analysis, and researcher diary for three months period. Twenty children, the classroom teacher and the other school staff participated in the study. Descriptive and qualitative content analyses were conducted to analyze the data. The results suggest that the children formed a complex culture through symbols and games to negotiate about the features of day to day interactions in the classroom. In addition, the children resisted against the influences of the teacher by turning places like the washroom and the cafeteria into a nesting area for a deeper level of personal interaction.

Purpose: This article explores different strands of educational discourse about sexual diversity in Portuguese schools, from the students' perspectives. Method: The methodological approach consisted in conducting focus groups discussions: 36 with 232 young students (H = 106, M = 126) in 12 public secondary schools. Findings: Students reveal a polyphony of discourses that gravitate between liberal acceptance, conditional acceptance and intolerance. Research implications: Attention is drawn not only to discriminatory processes that question school as a democratic place for LGBT youth, but also to the gap between what is legally decreed and a lack of know-how in the approach to sexual diversity in school.

This research evinces the value of the multidimensional perceptions of the metaphors towards swimming discipline and its relevant certain contexts according to swimming coach candidates. In this article, we used qualitative research paradigm away from positivist approaches to describe and interpret stories and personal experiences of the participants. Fifty-five undergraduate senior students who studied in the department of coaching education in a large South-eastern university were secured homogenously (aged between 21 and 29). Using a semi-structured interview form, data were generated based on six predetermined contexts: swimming, swimming coach, freestyle, backstroke, breaststroke, and butterfly. Each context focused participants' metaphor generation processes. As data generation continued, we also intended to be participant-observer to gain epistemological privilege by participating in and experiencing what is going on. Within the predetermined contexts, thematic analysis conducted through a software package of NVivo 11 Plus emerged seventeen conditions (sub-themes). In the portrait gallery of metaphoric perceptions of coach candidates towards swimming discipline, we found variety in the mental images of each context.

The aim of this study was to explore the degree to which a professional development (PD) program designed using GeoGebra influences a group of Turkish middle school teachers' beliefs in relation to mathematics and role of GeoGebra in mathematics education. In order to collect the required data, the PD course was established to provide six teachers with an opportunity to obtain practical experiences with and necessary knowledge about the use of GeoGebra in mathematics education. In this context, a multiple case study approach was utilized, in which mathematics teachers were observed and interviewed using a variety of procedures to expose qualitative data about their beliefs and the dynamics of their beliefs changes during the course. The main findings illustrated that teachers' beliefs were transformed to some extent in favour of the use of GeoGebra, as well as using constructivist ideas in their mathematics teaching and learning can be attained through the GeoGebra based PD course. In fact, the relationship amongst stated beliefs and intended teaching practice is complex and the social issues were very influential on teachers' pedagogical decisions. This research also introduces some suggestions for researchers who focus on professional development of mathematics teachers relative to their beliefs.

The full day school program is a new model in the education management system in Indonesia. This phenomenon is interesting because there is a paradox in it. Education in Indonesia is often criticized for the learning which is too heavy, but the full day school program gets a positive response from the community although it has longer school hours. This research aims to answer the questions; 1) How is a full day school praxis program in Indonesia? Second, how is the implementation of humanizing the classroom learning program in schools that implement the full day school program? This research is a qualitative research with locus at Islam Terpadu Salsabila Elementary School (SDIT Salsabila), Yogyakarta. Research subject is determined by purposive sampling. Method of data collections are: 1) participant observation, 2) in-depth interview, 3) questionnaire, and 4) document analysis. Data analysis technique is inductive-qualitative. The results are; First, the full day school program in Indonesia is growing as a result of the increasing number of busy working parents. They do not have the opportunity to accompany their children at home because they are busy working from morning to evening. The full day school program is an educative solution for them. Secondly, humanizing the classroom is implemented through students' active involvement in the classroom and the learning process is democratic and fun. This approach is a solution so that students do not feel boredom in learning although they spent their time throughout the day at school.

Using a Mixed Methods approach, this study investigated changes in levels of self-efficacy among elementary preservice teachers following a semester course on teaching elementary students' mathematics. Participants in this study included 347 preservice elementary teachers at a mid-size regional university who had just completed an elementary mathematics methods course. The data were collected from several semester groups. The instruments used were the Mathematics Teaching Efficacy Beliefs Instrument, interview data, and observation data collected during the clinical experience. The focus of this study was to compare the changes in teacher self-efficacy following a methods course that emphasized hands-on mathematics instruction with manipulatives by means of the 5E instructional format. The results of the paired-samples t-test indicated that there was a significant difference in the preservice elementary teachers' self-efficacy for teaching mathematics after engaging in the elementary methods course. Preservice teachers reported that their understanding of various instructional practices changed significantly from a "tell, show, and do" model to an approach utilizing interactive and engaging activities. They also reported that their attitude toward mathematics had improved significantly and that there had been a direct impact on their confidence for teaching mathematics as a result of the structure of the elementary math methods course.

Western teachers working in China often experience cultural conflicts arising from, for instance, the ways that Chinese students perceive face and express criticism. To better understand these face-concerned conflicts, this paper explores the role and significance of email for a group of Chinese students to communicate pedagogical criticism with their western teacher as part of an undergraduate program in Communicative Language Teaching (CLT). A quantitative and qualitative examination of the politeness strategies employed by the Chinese students in their critical emails revealed the three roles of email: email as a safe, polite and effective channel for the Chinese students to express critical views "directly" (without turning to a third party) and "collectively" (on behalf of the other students), email as a major means for their western teacher to be informed about problems "privately," and email as a springboard for the western teacher to communicate later with more other students "publicly." What was criticized in the emails indicated the fundamental disparities in their perceptions of knowledge, the identity of English, and the classroom behavior of silence. Interpretation and discussion of findings were informed by the studies of Chinese psychology and the writer's insider knowledge gained from her four-year longitudinal participant observation.

Previous literature has focused on international student's social transition and monocultural and bicultural ties. Little research has explored international students' multicultural friendship development and the role that physical activity plays in their social interaction. The current case study explored a group of international students' friendship development and the social aspect of physical activity. Data from individual interviews (pre and post), and 5 months of participant observations was used to describe two female international students' experiences. Results suggested international students faced both language and cultural barriers in their social interactions with American students. Engagement in physical activities served as the context where observations of peer-to-peer social behaviors happened. Researchers argued that the multicultural friendship developed and strengthened by engaging in these physical activities. This paper also discussed implications and limitations of the study as well as future recommendations.

We report findings of an ethnographic study that explored complexities of English Language Teaching (ELT) in a minority indigenous context in northwestern Mexico. The study investigated a trilingual education setting at the nexus of 2 major events: incorporation of Intercultural Bilingual Education throughout Mexico and integration of ELT into the country's public school system. Methods included participant observation in primary-level language classes and semi-structured interviews with educators and other stakeholders affiliated with a rural school where an indigenous variety, a societal variety, and a foreign language were taught. Findings indicate that teacher agency was a powerful tool in linguistic and cultural maintenance and transforming language policy and planning at the local level. Although the spread of English may be unavoidable, with local community involvement and a school-based commitment to support linguistic and cultural maintenance, the micro language policy context can be configured to promote a symbiotic relationship among linguistic varieties.

This research note offers a critical reflection of the process of conducting qualitative research in the Irish primary school setting. The research discussed took place during the school year 2016-2017. It explored primary school children's understandings of citizenship and, the kinds of collective social actions they participated in as citizens and peers at school. I reflect upon this in terms of my experiences of gaining and maintaining access in Irish primary schools. I also draw attention to social and cultural contexts within the research setting and the influence this has over data collection. I aim to offer some useful insights into the process of conducting qualitative research within formal education settings and, to encourage conversation between researchers and educators to find solutions to issues associated with conducting research in schools.

"Romani people" are a disadvantaged group of people due to their socio-cultural and socio-economic conditions. This situation makes them poor and thus cannot afford education. As Romani people have the tendency to love music, it is considered that music activities may encourage their children who generally have negative attitudes towards school to attend school systematically. Therefore, this work aims to directly and indirectly encourage the Romani children to attend school through music activities. For this purpose, a public primary school was used consisting entirely of Romani children. A first-year class was selected as a pilot group. Multicultural and multidisciplinary music activities based on Orff approach were carried out with the pilot group, for 2 h per week by the music teacher, who was also the participant observer. All activities were video-taped and transcribed for systematic analysis process. The results showed that Orff-based music activities carried out for educational and therapeutic purposes created a positive effect on the musical and non-musical development of Romani children. In addition, by using a variety of activities from different countries, the children's sociocultural awareness and understanding of multicultural differences were enhanced as well as their social interaction and communication skills.

The concept of Learning Analytics, as we understand it today, is relatively new but the practice of evaluating user behavior is not innovative. For years, technological development, along with other educational aspects, have encouraged, developed and facilitated this practice as a way of providing a personalized quality experience to students. The main goal of this study, carried out in the Primary Education Degree of the University of Murcia, was to research, from the perspective of Social Learning Analytics, how students learn and collaborate in online environments, specifically through their use of social media. With the idea of improving and optimizing future teaching experiences, a pilot study was conducted using weblog, Twitter and Facebook to work with different topics on the subject. The method used in this research was a participant observation and the analysis performed was both quantitative, based mainly on the data gathered from the learning analytics, and qualitative (analyzing students' content from comments). Results show that there was greater interaction on Facebook than weblogs, where students interacted to deal with aspects related to the learning process and the topic of the subject. This exchange of information grew during the development of the experience. In addition, learning analytics shows that there is a relationship between group members and their interaction and behavior in networks.

The results of an investigative process are reported that centre on the impact that modular curricular organization and its interdisciplinary activity are having on the teaching culture in the Degree in Social Education at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/ EHU). This understanding of the curriculum is a seminal change for teaching staff and affects their professional identity by encouraging co-responsibility throughout the process. Communicative methodology is employed, which assists in the integration of the people in the investigation, so that they form part of the process of study under equal terms. The production of data was done through in-depth interviews, discussion groups, and documental analysis. The Interdisciplinary Activity Module (IAM) was developed in small groups, of 12-15 individuals, through active methodologies, and the university teachers needed to incorporate it into their discourse and relations with other colleagues and with their students. The results show that an integrated curriculum provides a worthwhile training opportunity to achieve learning of greater significance and depth, and that it happens through changes in their ways of relating and acting as teachers.

In the undergraduate biology laboratory, many freshmen are apathetic towards the content of the course. Curriculum based reader's theater (CRBT) is an instructional method that can increase interest the students in the content of the course while improving student communication, collaboration and understanding. This research is an examination of the student's attitudes about participating in a non-traditional teaching method such as CRBT in a biology laboratory setting. A reflection document was given to the students before and after their experience with the CRBT in the biology laboratory to determine the attitudes of the students about the experience with this novel instructional method. Qualitative methods were used to code and examine the student reflections along with three other data sources. Most of the students were initially positive about performing a reader's theater as a part of the biology lab, while 81 % of the students who had originally negative perceptions of the reader's theater, changed their perceptions from negative to positive after the reader's theater experience. The findings of this research indicate that students respond positively to the use of curriculum based reader's theater in a biology laboratory as an alternative instructional method.

Social scientists have begun to document the stratifying effects of over a decade of unprecedented charter growth in urban districts. An exodus of students from traditional neighborhood schools to charter schools has attended this growth, creating troubling numbers of vacant seats in neighborhood schools as well as concentrating larger percentages of high-need student populations like special education students and English Language Learners in these schools (Buras, 2014; Gabor, 2014; Knefel, 2014). In cities like Philadelphia, the maintenance of two parallel educational systems--one charter, the other district--has also strained budgets and contributed to fiscal crises that have further divested traditional district schools of critical resources (Popp, 2014). How are youth, teachers, and staff in neighborhood schools responding to these conditions and the moral associations that the "neighborhood school" has come to invoke within an expanding educational marketplace? What does it mean to attend and/or work in a traditional neighborhood school in the midst of the dramatic restructuring of urban public education? Using frameworks developed in anthropological and sociological studies of social stigma, I explore in this paper how the power of market stratification has come to influence the intensification of institutional stigmas around the traditional neighborhood school (Anyon, 1980; Goffman, 1963; Link and Phelan, 2001). Drawing on ethnographic data from a neighborhood school in Philadelphia, I center youth perspectives on their aspirations and life chances given their status as students in a non-selective neighborhood school in my analysis. I ultimately interrogate how notions of race, educational quality, and [lack of] school choice, impact this neighborhood school community's sense of worth and future as individuals as well as an institution.

The interdisciplinary "Foodways and Futures" project (2013-2016) is based on a pilot study which found no improvement in the nutritional state of formerly homeless young people (16-25), now in supported accommodation at a charitable youth organization. Because a healthy food intake during adolescence is important, and because young people with socioeconomic lower backgrounds face difficulties in maintaining a healthy diet (Beasley at al., 2005), I investigated how the young people themselves experience their relationship to food. In this paper I explore links between the lived experience before and during their stay with the organization of this vulnerable group, and their food choices and practices. The study illustrates the ways in which those choices and practices may appear nutritionally undesirable, but are nevertheless linked to the young people's search for ontological security and social connectedness, in their new living environment. In this, I draw on and extend Schlossberg's (1981) transition theory in order to better understand the rationales underlying an individual's subjective food choices.

In this paper, we entangle Latino/a youth activism with ritual culture in U.S. higher education. Specifically, we analyze ethnographically-generated data from Gildersleeve's (2015; 2016) study of Latino graduation ceremonies, emplacing our analyses within new materialist philosophy. We theorize the Latino graduation ceremony as assemblage (DeLanda, 2006) and produce new sensibilities about the significance of Latino/a youth activism in contemporary U.S. higher education. The purposes of this paper are two-fold. First, we hope to contribute to the knowledge-base around how Latino/a youth use/claim space in their efforts for social change. Second, we hope to contribute to the growing literature in education that draws from new materialist philosophy and develops new methods/analyses to help reveal youth experiences.

This study investigated how a study abroad experience teaching mathematics in Tanzania, Africa impacted a group of secondary education pre-service teachers (PSTs) from the United States. In particular we discuss their ability to facilitate the learning of students in multilingual mathematics classrooms while personally developing intercultural competence. We examined three areas: the PSTs' attitudes, knowledge and comprehension, and skills in an effort to understand their ability to teach in multilingual classrooms.

Holistic education is education which appreciates all of students' potencies in learning process. This research is aimed at analyzing the implementation of holistic education in multilingual program of Madrasah Mu'allimaat Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta. The research was a descriptive-qualitative approach with data collection techniques: in-depth interviews, participant observation, and documentation. The analysis of the data was by reduction, display, and provided conclusions. The result of the research shows that: (1) the implementation of holistic education toward the students of Multilingual program of Madrasah Mu'allimaat was held through four quotients: spiritual quotient (SQ), emotional quotient (EQ), adversity quotient (AQ), and intellectual quotient (IQ) in which those quotients are integrated to madrasah and boarding. (2) Holistic education has impact on the transformation of the students' character values, which are (1) intrinsic religiosity with deep faith-planted inside, (2) able to control emotion, self-motivated, care, and well-socialized, (3) the improvement of academic achievement, and (4) tough in facing problems, not easy of being hopeless, stressful, or frustrated.

The following article aims to present, from children's perspectives, the value of literacy and how they use it in their everyday lives. Through the use of ethnographic methodology, including observations, interviews and collection of artifacts, it seeks to examine how children rely on their literacy skills authentically, as they play and move between spaces and respond to stimuli in their environment. I followed six children as telling cases and used Strauss and Corbin's (1990) Grounded Theory to illuminate the findings. Two dominant themes emerged: connecting and participating in significant moments. These findings provide much guidance on how teachers and parents can more readily support young children in their literacy development. It also supports the notion that children's perceptions of the value of literacy are inextricably linked to how they use it within their personal contexts: at home, school, and the wider community. This also supports children's use literacy as a means of bonding with and participating in social experiences.

To date, relatively little research has examined the perceptions of children and parents involved in university-assisted partnership programs. In this paper, we present findings from a case study of a university-assisted community school (UACS) afterschool program wherein we interviewed participating students and their parents. We also completed participant observations at the school site and included the perspectives of the two central administrative staff (i.e., the school principal and the afterschool program coordinator), as this served to deepen our understanding. Our findings highlight how the students and parents positioned the UACS afterschool program as being significantly different from the regular school day, while also noting how the program positively shaped the children's lives. Further, we highlight how the administrative staff positioned the university as central to the afterschool program; in contrast, the students and parents did not mention the resources that were bound to the university. We conclude with implications for practitioners and scholars engaged in university-assisted partnership work.

This qualitative study examines the learning and interaction processes between Latino/a teacher candidates (TCs) and youth during a community service-learning program involving science and math. Knowing and affirming nondominant youth's strengths are essential from funds of knowledge and Third Space perspectives. Participants were 11 TCs and their tutees, 30 youth in first through tenth grades. The study took place in a Texas border colonia, or unincorporated settlement lacking basic services. Data sources were participant observations, youth's interviews and TCs' pre- and final reflections, rapport-building analyses, a focus group, and lesson plans. We found TCs incorporated the youth's funds to develop and implement authentic math and science lessons with them. Implications relate to how community service-learning projects can help TCs' future math and science teaching and can create a Third Space to explore math and science in culturally-relevant ways.

In support of growing numbers of dual language programs nation-wide, dual language school administrators seek to find teachers who are specifically prepared to work with dual language learners for additive biliteracy. For this research the author utilized a case study design to explore practicing dual language administrators' perspectives regarding programmatic necessities related to dual language teachers and how these needs might shape responses from U.S. teacher education programs. The study participants voiced fundamental considerations regarding dual language teachers' essential competencies along with the complexities of additive biliteracy and academic language development in both Spanish and English. Additionally, the study's findings and discussions provide participants' detailed recommendations for new ways to consider preparing dual language teachers for the specialized pedagogies necessary to support dual language learners' biliteracy and academic language development.

In the current study, the authors qualitatively investigate, through the theoretical perspective of cognitive dissonance, the relationship between teacher beliefs and their associated teacher practices at two public elementary schools with diverse student populations. They argue that while teachers may hold theoretical beliefs about culturally proficient teaching, they may also hold deficit beliefs associated with pre-existing cognitions about the reasons for disparities in the academic outcomes of diverse student populations. Three research questions guided this study: (1) What beliefs (culturally proficient beliefs, deficit beliefs) do teachers hold about teaching students from diverse populations; (2) What are the classroom practices of teachers with diverse students; and (3) What is the relationship among culturally proficient beliefs, deficit beliefs, and teacher practices in the classroom? The authors present and discuss the findings in light of the relevant literature and cognitive dissonance theory. The study concludes with several recommendations for teacher practice and future research.

In this article, I revisit the concept of activist educational research to consider a wider array of methodological approaches that support the documentation and transformation of systems of oppression, from youth participatory action research projects to 'studying up.' Although activist researchers often turn to participatory methods, I examine how 'studying up' can support grassroots organizing from below. Drawing on my own experiences 'studying up' to better understand how emerging national security policies have criminalized Muslim youth, I analyze the methodological considerations, ethical provocations, and accountability processes such projects raise. By (re)broadening what counts as activist educational research using the rubric of transforming existing social arrangements and reaffirming the feminist concept of 'strong objectivity' (Harding, 1995), I encourage education scholars across the globe to engage a broader range of methodological approaches to support community struggles for educational justice.

The opportunities to attend higher education in Mexico have traditionally been offered to the middle class population since around 30% of students who finish high school are able to attend higher education. The main reason for this low attendance is the poverty in which much of the population lives and the lack of higher education institutions in rural areas. Low attendance to higher education is accentuated in marginalised indigenous groups. Migration from the rural areas to the cities over the years has enabled that recently, some indigenous students pursue higher education as a way to improve their social and economic opportunities. Indigenous students attending higher education in urban areas have to face additional challenges given that they speak their own native language, they come from a different culture, usually have a history of poor academic achievement, and face discrimination. In the Autonomous University of Ciudad Juarez (UACJ), an urban university on the Mexico-US border, was implemented a programme to support indigenous students attending the UACJ to favour their academic success. This programme also aims to increase the number of indigenous students attending the UACJ to develop them as professionals and leaders to impact positively their communities. This paper presents the findings of a qualitative study using participant observation and semi-structured interviews as the data collection methods to explore the implementation of the programme. Findings of collected data were grouped in two main themes: progresses and challenges of this programme.

The Education District and Circuit Offices in South Africa are mandated by the Department of Basic Education to support schools under their jurisdiction. Reasons for the lack of such support to schools have been highlighted in various reports and research findings. This paper examines the role that properly constructed school improvement plans, developed by schools, and circuit improvement plans, developed by the Circuit Team, plays in effective district/circuit support to schools. We report on the construction of a theoretical model to assist Circuit Teams to support School Management Teams of underperforming high schools towards whole-school development in which these improvement plans play a central role. We followed an action research design, employing qualitative data generation and analysis methods. The participating School Management Teams and Circuit Team members attested to the value of the collaborative learning experience which ignited feelings of empowerment and increased cooperation. These findings suggest the value of an action learning approach to the professional development of both School Management Teams and Circuit Team members. The action-learning model that emerged from this collaborative enquiry consists of three distinctive phases, each phase containing a number of specific activities to be implemented in order for schools to progress towards becoming self-managing institutions of learning.

The continuous poor performance of South Africa's learners is detrimental to its developing economy. The need for education change prompted two universities to initiate a system-wide change strategy in a poorly performing school district. The leverage for change was leadership development, involving school principals and district officials. The global impetus for driving leadership development is based on the positive association between high-quality leadership and effective schools. The change strategy was a three year leadership development intervention programme. An evaluative case study was used to investigate the experiences of the participants during the implementation of the programme. Research methods included individual interviews, observation, and a survey by means of a questionnaire. Using systems theory as a theoretical framework, various disconnections were identified in the school district. These disconnections concern the interrelationships between the educational leaders which hinder organisational learning. Changing the culture of the school district through system-wide collaboration could be the key to systemic improvements. Strategies such as collective capacity building, joint problem-solving, networking and system leadership, might provide the essential "glue" for strengthening the interconnections within the school district.

The growing cultural and linguistic diversities in Western countries and rapid globalization have put urgent demands on K-16 schools in terms of developing strategies to accommodate these changes. One of the critical issues for schools is to prepare pre-service and in-service teachers to work effectively with their diverse student populations. The increased calls for global and cross-cultural competence training for teachers have led many teacher education programs in the U.S. as well as other countries to offer student teaching abroad opportunities. There seems to be international consensus that student teaching abroad confers significant benefits on pre-service teachers' professional skills and dispositions, including those involved in working with students from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds. However, most of the research has identified these benefits through survey or interview data collected immediately upon the participants' return. Few have studied participants' teaching in the following year to explore how the international experience has been translated to their domestic contexts in terms of their cultural awareness and skills in teaching diverse students. The research questions guiding this study were: (1) How did student teaching abroad influence participants' first-year teaching practices with culturally diverse students?; and (2) How were these impacts affected by the teachers' personal and professional backgrounds and current teaching contexts and situations? The participants in the study were twelve pre-service teachers from a large university in the southeastern United States who participated in a student teaching program in Beijing, China. Qualitative case study methodology was used to gain an in-depth understanding of the complex ways in which participants applied their experiences to their subsequent teaching. Data was collected from participants for pre- and post-trip surveys, structured journals, and observations and interviews in China. A later stage of data collection included interviews and classroom observations with five self-selected participant teachers in their domestic classrooms during the following year. To triangulate the data, the principal researcher took the role of a participant observer throughout the preparatory sessions and for two weeks of the time the participants spent in China. The findings suggest that all teachers can benefit from international student teaching; thus, educational institutions should provide international opportunities and encourage students to take advantage of them. However, based on findings from this year-long study, colleges and universities can re-plan their overseas teaching programs to make them more meaningful and useful for novice teachers.

According to the National Disabled People Data Base within Ministry of Family and Social Policies (Özveri), there are 1.559.222 disabled people in Turkey. If this rate would be linked to the families of the disabled people, the number of people who spend time with disabled individuals would increase to 10 million. This number corresponds to 12.5% of the country's population. This requires sensitiveness from each individual because everyone is either a disabled person, related to a disabled person or a potential disabled person. In this case, the importance of information related to disabled people, acquired by the students in the highest institutions of the education system increases due to the fact that they are future teachers and potential managers. This research was conducted in Abant Izzet Baysal University, School of Physical Education and Sport in order to analyze and understand the effects of disability training on the students. Designed as an activity research, this study took 36 h for 12 weeks. The research was conducted with 15 voluntary students who took Physical Education and Sport for Disabled People and Sport for Disabled People classes. The data were gathered through focus group discussion and field notes. In the analysis of the data, both descriptive and content analyses were used. All of the operations were done by NVIVO 10 qualitative analysis program. Results showed that the students reached almost all phases of the cognitive domain outcomes by acquiring a level of information more advanced than the level they had at the beginning. Furthermore, especially the outcomes at the affective domain revealed that the students became more equipped in this respect.

This study explores teaching experiences of educators within the virtual world of Second Life (SL) and pedagogical practices adopted. A blended approach is applied by using physical classrooms, BlackboardTM, web-based resources, and the virtual world of SL in an Information Literacy (IL) class for 1st year undergraduate students at an institution in the UK. A Case study was employed as well as a parallel qualitative component, interviews, was added to the study that provided another source of insights to articulate perspectives of educators in teaching within VWs. In reflecting and evaluating the teaching experiences, evidence is drawn from observations, semi structured interviews, chat logs, snapshots, and field notes. A thematic approach is used to analyse the data. The findings from the data analysis are presented in terms of seven themes: cybergogy, creativity, trial and error, wow moment, uncertainty, experiential learning, and dynamic relationship.

This paper is based on eight months of ethnographic fieldwork in the periphery of Banjul, the capital of The Gambia. It explores relations between the gender roles of women with modest educational achievement and their uses of literacy and numeracy. The paper applied New Literacy Studies theoretical framework of literacy as a "social practice". Data was collected from 120 women with low and no educational qualifications in the urban Gambia who participated in the three different stages of the study, namely: survey, focus group discussions and individual interviews along with participant observations. The study data was analyzed through the use of both qualitative and quantitative data analysis techniques. The survey data was analyzed and presented in the form of descriptive statistics for illuminating the demographic characteristics of the study participants. The analysis of the qualitative data was done through the use of both inductive and deductive coding strategies for identifying common themes and patterns across the different data sources. In this paper, a detailed ethnographic account of four cases of women who participated in the study is provided for illuminating the literacy environment as well as the circumstances subsumed within it that induce or suppress literacy practices among women of limited educational qualifications in The Gambia. The study uncovers instances where women's uses of literacy and numeracy added greater efficiency in their economic activities and highlight other scenarios where literate women did not rely on those skills in the exercise of their economic activities. Findings confirm New Literacy Studies (NLS) theoretical claim that literacy skills do not automatically create their uses. Rather, literacy uses are a product of their socio-cultural context of their application. From the four cases reported here, this paper substantially illuminates women's economic livelihood strategies, the contextual barriers they encounter in performing their economic roles and their opportunities and limitations for using and sharpening their written numeracy and literacy skills. Knowledge concerning the interaction of women's economic livelihoods and literacy uses constitutes critical information that could inform adult education and economic policy development in Sub-Saharan Africa.

This study shared unique design experiences by examining the process of transferring residential courses to the Web, and proposed a design model for individuals who want to transfer their courses into this environment. The formative research method was used in the study, and two project teams' processes of putting courses, which were being taught in classrooms at the time, on the Web were examined in depth to reveal and confirm the components of the design model. The participants were 13 instructional designers. In addition to the logbooks kept by the designers, individual and focus group interview techniques were employed in the data-gathering process. Two researchers analyzed the data concurrently using content analysis. The logbooks and the focus-group interviews were used for model formation, and the individual interviews to confirm the components of the model. Based on the findings from the two design cases, the experience-based e-course design model consisting of seven basic stages including forming design team, preliminary search, analysis, instructional and technical design, integration, tests, and improvements was proposed. It is considered that sustaining Web-based course design efforts within this model will enable both implementing the design process more effectively, and the Web-based course obtained at the end of the process to have higher quality.

The concept of self-efficacy, which is an important variable in the teaching process, and how it reflects on teaching have recently been the focus of attention. Therefore, this study deals with the relationship between the science-teaching self-efficacy beliefs of prospective science teachers and their teaching practices. It was conducted with four prospective science teachers who were in their final year at a state university. The teaching processes of prospective science teachers, all of whom had different levels of science teaching self-efficacy beliefs, were detected using the case study, a qualitative research method. Observations, interviews, and documents were used as data collection tools. The obtained data were analyzed through the method of content analysis. According to the findings, although the prospective science teachers were observed to have different levels of self-efficacy belief, they agreed that the student-centered approach was more suitable for students, especially in terms of the teaching process. However, they reflected this differently in their practices. Contrary to expectation, it was generally confirmed that teachers with high-levels of self-efficacy might perform their teaching practices less efficiently in some situations, while teachers with low-level of self-efficacy might perform their teaching practices more efficiently.

This article addresses the present gap in empirical research on the possibilities and challenges of global citizenship education in U.S. public schools by presenting findings from a five-year, ethnographic case study. The setting for this study is Olympus High School, a small, suburban public high school in Pennsylvania. Beginning in the 2009-2010 school year, Olympus undertook a reform initiative to integrate teaching about the world into its curricular offerings. Although Olympus is just one case, the story of Olympus's reform process reveals the inherent tension between preparing students to be knowledge workers in the global economy and preparing them to be active participants in global civil society. It also illustrates how test-based accountability and alignment to standards can impede efforts to broaden the curriculum in the interest of developing knowledgeable, responsible, and critically minded global citizens.

This study was carried out with 2 students with mild mental deficiency, one in 5th grade and the other in 6th grade of Turgut Özal Secondary School in Bulanik County of Mus Province. It was done during the spring semester of the 2014-2015 school year in order to observe the effect of multimedia-assisted instruction on listening skills of mainstreamed students with mild mental deficiency. The courses were taught in the information and communication technologies classroom outside the course hours with permissions from the parents and school administration. The study was designed as a case study, a qualitative research model. The lessons were videotaped to obtain data. The parents were interviewed in order to determine the state of the students after class. The data collected using semi-structured interviews was evaluated through content analysis. The study was conducted using the multimedia-assisted instruction method to discuss a total of four listening texts, with one text per week. The texts were prepared according to the multimedia-assisted instruction method. The students listened to the texts, accompanied by relevant visuals projected on a screen with background music. Tools such as animations, videos, music, etc. that reflect the central theme of the texts were prepared to be shown before and after the texts. As a result of classroom observations and interviews held with the parents, it was concluded that multimedia-assisted instruction was effective on the listening skills of mainstreamed students with mild mental deficiency. The animations, videos and cartoons that the students watched made them enjoy the lesson and become active participants in the listening process.

The aim of this study is to investigate the sources of conflict between students and teachers, how they are managed, and their effect on students and thus gain insight about student-teacher conflicts. The study is a qualitative one and has been carried out with the method of case study. The method of criterion sampling which is one of the methods of purposeful sampling is used in the qualitative study tradition. Participatory observation technique and semi-structured interviews were used to collect data. The study has shown that the main reasons for the conflict between teachers and their students were the existence of poor and insufficient communication between the parties involved, and teacher dominance in such interactions. It has also shown that inappropriate conflict solving strategies negatively affect the students` psychology, social behaviour as well as their academic success. It is absolutely necessary to manage the teacher student conflict correctly in order to create a positive school climate and to conduct the education process effectively.

When we consider a strategy for dealing with globalization, it can be seen that intercultural interactions and encounters are very important and appropriate as effective outcomes are expected. Therefore, the need to assess the intercultural communicative competence (ICC) of those expected to achieve these outcomes is worth consideration. This study examined the intercultural communicative competence of front office personnel working in hotels in Bangkok. The study aimed to find out whether or not these hotel front office personnel were equipped with and/or have adequate intercultural competence to deal with interculturally diverse interactions within their workplace. The intercultural competence framework of Barrett, Byram, Lazar, Mompoint-Gaillard, and Philippou (2013) and the work of Byram (1997) provided a framework for analysis in this study. They were both operationally adjusted to fit within a Thai context. Byram's (1997) intercultural communicative competence objective-based approach was used as a guideline for the ICC assessment, and randomly selected hotel front office personnel were the target participants. The outcomes that emerged from the study can be used as guidelines for hotel human resources management in order to set up intercultural communication training courses, or by educational institutions to better enhance the ICC development of their graduates. Furthermore, the outcomes can also be used as an informational base for future research.

As the learning paradigms are shifting to include various forms of digital technologies such as synchronous, asynchronous, and interactive methods, social networking technologies have been introduced to the educational settings in order to increase the quality of learning environments. The literature suggests that effective application of these technologies in education can provide a means of addressing the lack of uptake and sharing of learning and teaching ideas and designs. This study investigated the effects of integrating social networking technologies on students' interaction, motivation, and engagement in an alternative learning school environment. Twenty-two 10th to 12th graders in an alternative school were recruited from their environmental science class to participate in this study. An online learning environment was designed to assist in-class instruction to promote student learning and engagement around the topic of climate change. Students' reflections that emerged from their interactions and posts on the social network indicated the relationship between the use of social networks and student motivation and engagement.

The current study sought to critically address the practice of rituals of distinction in nation-wide educational milieus to see if such practices can produce generations of underdeveloped and deprived learners. Data were collected over a course of two years from North Korea, Pakistan, Zimbabwe, Venezuela, and Somalia. A total of 419 teachers, educators and students from these countries responded to email communication, were observed through participant observation, or were interviewed through Skype; they provided descriptions and examples of educational settings and practices in their respective countries. The data were then analyzed qualitatively and in the light of (a) Bloom's taxonomy of educational objectives, (b) Maslow's hierarchy of needs, and (c) Feuerstein's notion of "culturally deprived" learners. It was concluded that, education systems in countries ruled by ideological or ideocratic regimes, intentionally and actively deprive learner generations of quality education with the aim of hammering whole societies into the shape which will guarantee their own grip on political power. Drawing on the concepts of "small-c culture" and "capital-c culture" from relevant literature, the paper argues that despotic regimes, by virtue of their education systems, mainly betray their most obedient citizens who are committed to them and whereby deprive them of true professionalism.