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Central Asian researchers are underrepresented in the global research production in social sciences, resulting in a limited Central Asian perspective on many social issues. To stimulate the production of local knowledge, it is important to develop strong research cultures, including knowledge of ethical practices in research with human participants. There is currently scarce evidence about research ethics regulations used by social science researchers working in the Central Asian region. This article reports findings from an online survey conducted in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan (n = 296) from October 2021 to January 2022. Focusing on three Central Asian countries, this article addresses the following research questions: What are the attitudes and practices of social science researchers based in Central Asia toward research ethics regulations and research ethics committees (RECs)? Is research ethics training associated with improved attitudes and practices in relation to research ethics among social scientists based in Central Asia? Is research experience associated with improved attitudes and practices in relation to research ethics among social scientists based in Central Asia? Regression analyses results demonstrate that locally based social scientists with prior research ethics training implement ethical procedures in their empirical research practice more often compared to researchers without any prior research ethics training. The preliminary findings indicate that research ethics training is positively associated with Central Asia-based social science researchers' engagement in ethical research, thus potentially increasing the amount and quality of empirical social science research produced in the region.

The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) faces an emerging challenge as it seeks to balance commitments to disciplinary inclusivity and scholarly quality. We undertake a scoping review of 64 articles across three leading SoTL journals to investigate how the literature balances these twin commitments by exploring what questions are being asked, what methods are being used, and how these may be impacting the inferences that are being made within that scholarship. We advocate for a more focused definition of SoTL that can help reinforce its legitimacy within institutional power structures of scholarship, and for partnerships across disciplinary boundaries to be a central pillar of SoTL that is both high quality and disciplinarily inclusive.

Managing and analysing large qualitative datasets pose a particular challenge for researchers seeking a consistent and rigorous approach to qualitative data analysis. This paper describes and demonstrates the development and adoption of a matrix tool to guide the qualitative data analysis of a large sample (N = 122) of interview data. The paper articulates the theoretical and conceptual underpinnings of the matrix analysis tool and how it was developed and applied in a longitudinal mixed methods out-of-home-care research study. Specific illustrations and examples of data integration and data analysis are provided to demonstrate the benefits and potentials of constructing matrix tools to guide research teams when working with large qualitative data sets alone or in combination with quantitative data sets.

The shift from traditional education to maker-centered learning calls for an analysis and evaluation of the current studies on professional development in maker-centered learning. The current systematic literature review was conducted to examine existing literature on teacher professional development for maker-centered learning. It aligns the literature to the theory of constructionism, which is often cited as a foundational theory supporting maker-centered learning. The creation and integration of makerspaces in educational environments is a growing trend that supports creating and building material objects for learning. As makerspaces emerge in K-12 contexts, the need for research-based teacher education practices becomes apparent. The findings of this literature review describe the current landscape of research on this topic, illustrating the types of research conducted, the goals of professional development for teachers in this area, and effective elements of professional development experiences that contribute to teacher success in using maker-centered learning strategies. The implications of the findings and suggestions for future research are presented.

Educators and instructional designers have used the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework to guide their design of inclusive instruction for students with and without disabilities. Despite UDL having entered its 4th decade of development and research, there have been ongoing critiques of UDL for lacking clarity in definition, challenges with implementation, and insufficient evidence of its effectiveness. These critiques warrant further evaluation of UDL, especially with a focus on the theoretical underpinnings behind its conceptualization and implementation. Thus, we synthesized 32 peer-reviewed studies published between 1999 and 2023 that focused on UDL implementation in preK-12 educational settings and measured various aspects of student learning outcomes (e.g., cognitive, motivational, and behavioral). Specifically, we evaluated each study's intervention or instructional design in terms of its alignment to UDL checkpoints, guidelines, and/or principles as well as existing theories of learning or instructional design. Results revealed several interrelated challenges that stymie UDL research, including the absence of explicit alignment between UDL checkpoints and intervention or instructional designs investigated in the extant literature, the uneven coverage of implemented checkpoints and corresponding guidelines, the overlap among multiple checkpoints and guidelines, and the lack of theoretical guidance regarding the design and implementation processes. Based on these findings, we provide recommendations for strengthening the research base for less frequently applied UDL checkpoints, recommendations for documenting checkpoints and relationships among checkpoints as indispensable components of UDL implementation, and directions for future research conducted via systematic UDL implementation guided by established theories.

In this design case, we describe The Handwavey Game (Handwavey)--a tabletop, cooperative role-playing game created to study how people can come to converge on novel physical gestures around meaning. In Handwavey, players are novice wizards who cast spells through signaling abstract images with hand movements: success is rewarded in-game and failure has humorous in-game consequences. This case walks through the path of exploration and development from the starting point of a research question to the development of game mechanics and concludes with a set of design recommendations for people interested in designing novel games with specific research or learning meta-goals.

Purpose: This article develops a methodological framework to support qualitative analyses of legal texts. Scholars across the social sciences and humanities use qualitative methods to study legal phenomena but often overlook formal legal texts as productive sites for analysis. Moreover, when qualitative researchers do analyze legal texts, they rarely discuss the methodological underpinnings that support their approach. A thorough consideration of the methodological underpinnings of qualitative approaches to legal analysis is therefore warranted. Design/methodology/approach: By bringing critical legal theory into conversation with qualitative methodology, this article outlines a set of key principles to inform qualitative approaches to reading the law. Findings: To construct this methodological framework, this article first distinguishes between qualitative approaches to textual analysis and the doctrinal approaches undertaken in legal practice and formal legal scholarship. It then considers how this qualitative approach might be applied to one particular genre of legal text: namely, judicial opinions, otherwise known as reasons for judgment. In doing so, it argues that robust qualitative analyses of legal texts must consider the unique characteristics of those texts, such as their distinct form, voice, rhetorical structure, and performative capabilities. Originality/value: The methodological framework outlined here should encourage qualitative researchers to approach legal texts more readily and challenge the hegemony of doctrinal approaches to legal interpretation in social science research.

This paper presents a systematic literature review characterizing the methodological properties of usability studies conducted on educational and learning technologies in the past 20 years. PRISMA guidelines were followed to identify, select, and review relevant research and report results. Our rigorous review focused on (1) categories of educational and learning technologies that have been the focus of usability evaluation, (2) specific usability evaluation methods used, (3) outcome measures, and (4) research limitations. Findings revealed a diverse range of usability evaluation methods employed for different types of educational/learning technologies and the contexts in which those methods were used, with the majority of usability studies being performed on e-learning technologies within higher education contexts. Specific methods, instrumentation, and types of usability research found to be dominant in reviewed studies were further analyzed and classified, with findings suggesting inquiry methods using questionnaires were most prevalent. Prevalent outcome measures were also synthesized, with findings suggesting that the majority of usability research focuses on issues of technological usability, with very few studies considering pedagogical and socio-cultural aspects of usability. A number of limitations were found, including conceptual and procedural flaws, fundamental misunderstanding of usability evaluation methods, and inappropriate application of usability methods, suggesting potentially problematic and unreliable results. These findings are discussed in-depth, and implications for future research are provided.

Systematic reviews should be reported completely and accurately so that users can interpret and appraise the review findings appropriately. In this commentary, we describe key features of a major update of the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses statement--PRISMA 2020--and discuss its implications for research synthesis methodologists.

Purpose: This paper aims to look at how participant photography can be used in human resource development (HRD) as a research method that is innovative and inclusive. In published work on traditional photo elicitation methods, the participant is shown previously prepared visual images to create knowledge. This can provoke an inaccurate depiction due to the images being previously prepared. Participant photography differs greatly from the traditional photo-elicitation method. In participant photography, the participant is provided with the opportunity to capture their own visual images of the surrounding environment, allowing for data to be captured through their own eyes. More notably, participants voice their own experiences after taking the photographs as a means for providing rich data for researchers. Design/methodology/approach: Participant photography is an innovative qualitative research method where the research participant is encouraged to document their lived experiences through images taken by the participant. Additionally, the participants take part in individual interviews and group individual sessions to further explain the images. Findings: The research findings can lead to deeper insight into the research topic and even accommodate potential issues related to literacy and language barriers. By introducing a new qualitative research method to HRD, the lived experiences can be documented and examined in a new, different and arguably more accurate way. Research limitations/implications: Literature discussing participant photography in HRD is limited. Although this limitation puts constraints on this study, it creates an opportunity to further define how participant photography can be used in HRD. This method offers a means for HRD researchers and practitioners to focus on the voices of participants to improve organizations. Practical implications: This study addresses how participant photography can be used in the field of HRD by describing the process of participant recruitment, implementation of the method, participant interviews, group discussion and analysis. Specifically, this study focused on the practical application, including the method's strengths, potential weaknesses and ethical challenges. Social implications: The method of participant photography has been commonly used in community-based studies, public health projects and medical research projects, yet in ever-changing HRD needs, there are many advantages for the field of HRD to implement this method. Originality/value: Although the concept of participant photography is still in its infancy in HRD, this study explains how participant photography can be used for both researchers and practitioners to gain a deeper understanding and knowledge of topics related to HRD.

This paper focuses on how one university library embarked on a journey to provide information literacy instruction when a change in curriculum altered the library's role in a first-term research methods course. Enter the Scholarly Skills Community: a virtual learning landscape, consisting of more than 20 modules designed to fill gaps in information literacy and research skills. Embedded into the university's learning management system, the Scholarly Skills Community is an interactive, asynchronous destination for users to cultivate new knowledge and earn micro-credentials on topics related to information literacy and scholarly writing.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to develop an analytical framework toward facilitating the quantitative measurement of interdisciplinary understanding regarding sustainable energy systems with an application in the area of capacity-building projects in higher education. Design/methodology/approach: The analytical framework is developed using the portfolio representation measurement approach in combination with a survey questionnaire. The subsequent assessment is carried out using the statistical measure of mean signed deviation to capture variation from an established baseline across the project group and visualized via radar diagrams. Findings: The results provide a quantitative assessment framework for evaluating the degree of interdisciplinary understanding in the project groups. The application of the framework to the DESIRE project indicates the most significant degree of variation across economic and regulatory dimensions of sustainability. Discrepancies in general and educational contexts are observed. Research limitations/implications: The exploitable value of the results is sensitive to the derivation of composite indicators of the dimensions defined as well as the survey design. The case study was carried out on an ex-post basis, potentially biasing the results reported and limiting their interpretability and theoretical value. Practical implications: The analytical framework can be used as a basis for assessing and engaging in discussions on interdisciplinarity understanding at the outset of capacity-building projects. Originality/value: The contribution of this paper is practical in scope and entails the development of a quantitative framework for measuring interdisciplinarity in the specific context of capacity-building projects in the field of sustainability research in higher education institutions.

Concerns about the conduct of research are pervasive in many fields, including education. In this preregistered study, we replicated and extended previous studies from other fields by asking education researchers about 10 questionable research practices and five open research practices. We asked them to estimate the prevalence of the practices in the field, to self-report their own use of such practices, and to estimate the appropriateness of these behaviors in education research. We made predictions under four umbrella categories: comparison to psychology, geographic location, career stage, and quantitative orientation. Broadly, our results suggest that both questionable and open research practices are used by many education researchers. This baseline information will be useful as education researchers seek to understand existing social norms and grapple with whether and how to improve research practices.

Autistic children and adults who are non-verbal/minimally verbal or have an intellectual disability have often been excluded from Autism Spectrum Disorder research. Historical, practical and theoretical reasons for this exclusion continue to deter some researchers from work with this underserved population. We discuss why these reasons are neither convincing nor ethical, and provide strategies for dealing with practical issues. As part of a randomised controlled trial of an intervention for children with profound autism, we reflected as a multi-disciplinary team on what we had learnt from these children, their families and each other. We provide 10 strategies to overcome what appeared initially to be barriers to collecting data with this population. These hurdles and our solutions are organised by theme: interacting physically with children, how to play and test, navigating difficult behaviours, selecting suitable outcome measures, relating with parents, managing siblings, involving stakeholders, timing interactions, the clinician's role in managing expectations, and recruitment. The aim of this article is to provide researchers with the tools to feel motivated to conduct research with children with profound autism and their families, a difficult but worthwhile endeavour. Many of these lessons also apply to conducting research with non-autistic children with intellectual disabilities.

Today, researchers have the ability to conduct their investigations in a number of different manners, including both traditional testing using university subject pool participants and the more recent method of online recruitment. Although the use of internet participants is becoming more popular, this area of research is still very much in its infancy and needs further examination. Additionally, alternative web-based platforms need to be investigated because much of the literature has focused on using Amazon.com's Mechanical Turk (MTurk). Therefore, the current study recruited an internet population using the website Reddit, and compared them to a traditional undergraduate sample to learn more about this web-based platform. The results demonstrated similarities and distinctions between the two samples. Furthermore, previous findings in the psychological well-being literature were replicated. As a whole, the participants recruited from Reddit provided high-quality data that were inexpensive and comparable to the responses gathered using undergraduate participants. We conclude that this website appears to be a promising tool for the field of psychological assessment, research, and evaluation.

A "P" value, or the magnitude or direction of results can influence decisions about whether, when, and how research findings are disseminated. Regardless of whether an entire study or a particular study result is unavailable because investigators considered the results to be unfavorable, bias in a meta-analysis may occur when available results differ systematically from missing results. In this article, we summarize the empirical evidence for various reporting biases that lead to study results being unavailable for inclusion in systematic reviews, with a focus on health research. These biases include publication bias and selective nonreporting bias. We describe processes that systematic reviewers can use to minimize the risk of bias due to missing results in meta-analyses of health research, such as comprehensive searches and prospective approaches to meta-analysis. We also outline methods that have been designed for assessing risk of bias due to missing results in meta-analyses of health research, including using tools to assess selective nonreporting of results, ascertaining qualitative signals that suggest not all studies were identified, and generating funnel plots to identify small-study effects, one cause of which is reporting bias.

Replication is a key activity in scientific endeavors. Yet explicit replications are rare in many fields, including education and psychology. In this article, we discuss the relevance and value of replication in educational psychology and analyze challenges regarding the role replications can and should play in research. These challenges include philosophical, methodological, professional, and utility concerns about replication in education and the social sciences more broadly. Finally, we discuss strategies that may address these concerns in educational psychology research.

Participatory action research (PAR) investigates issues through collaboration and cooperation between academics and nonacademic community members. Recently, awareness of such approaches has increased as the need for transformative research and contribution to social goods has become clear. However, participatory methods have been deployed unevenly within the Humanities and Social Sciences, and opportunities for engagement have been explored unevenly. This article seeks to assist colleagues in teaching PAR methods by reflecting upon our practice of working with Early Career Researchers to identify, explore, and deploy participatory methods in ways that foster genuine social change and meaningful research trajectories.

Existing research practices in gifted education have many areas for potential improvement so that they can provide useful, generalizable evidence to various stakeholders. In this article, we first review the field's current research practices and consider the quality and utility of its research findings. Next, we discuss how open science practices increase the transparency of research so readers can more effectively evaluate its validity. Third, we introduce five large-scale collaborative research models that are being used in other fields and discuss how they could be implemented in gifted education research. Finally, we review potential challenges and limitations to implementing collaborative research models in gifted education. We believe greater use of large-scale collaboration will help the field overcome some of its methodological challenges to help provide more precise and accurate information about gifted education.

Evidence-based school counseling requires that practitioners and scholars utilize formal counseling theory. Theories that inform school counseling must cohere with the unique needs of students and school environments. Therefore, we propose that school counseling theories must include the following constituents: (a) qualities of students and school environments, (b) empirical and professional endorsements, (c) school counseling customs, and (c) methodological relevance. We describe the utility of these constituents through example using a school counseling-specific theory, the Advocating Student-within-Environment approach.

Acknowledging and navigating "mess" are clear priorities in the mixed methods literature. Mess enters the mixed methods process in two interrelated ways. The first is empirically, where quantitative and qualitative findings diverge or contrast rather than cohere; the second is through design, where research contexts demand unplanned adaptation. This article outlines three practices that help mixed methods researchers recognize and navigate both kinds of mess, collectively called the "craft attitude." The craft attitude consists of comfort with uncertainty, a nonlinear/recursive approach to research, and understanding research as storytelling. I further argue these components can orient researchers to mess in both structured and flexible ways by fostering three intellectual activities: science, craft/art, and ethical value judgment. This article contributes to the field of mixed methods by offering a practice-oriented concept facilitating the collective acknowledgement and engagement of mess, rather than concealing it in our research.

Since it was formalized by Kane, the argument-based approach to validation has been promoted as the preferred method for validating interpretations and uses of test scores. Because validation is discussed in terms of arguments, and arguments are both interactive and social, the present review systematically examines the scholarly arguments which appear in 83 papers on argument-based validation methods published in peer-reviewed journals. Findings suggest that scholars generally agree on the nature and importance of argument-based validation but disagree on whether validation should be structured or unstructured, formal or informal. Implications are discussed, including promotion of the "Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing" (AERA, APA, and NCME) as a foundation for consensus in the field.

The purpose of this study was to systematically review the literature on the prevalence of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) in school-aged youth (i.e., [less than or equal to] 18 years). Inclusion and exclusion search criteria led to the identification of 96 articles published during a 25-year period. Articles containing international samples (N = 44) and samples from the United States (N = 52) were examined for (a) the nature and prevalence of ACEs, (b) the nature of the samples and populations studied, and (c) the methods used to identify ACEs. Findings are narratively summarized and presented descriptively in tabular form to further assist school professionals in recognizing the diversity of ACEs worldwide and the array of methods used to identify trauma-related events. Prevalence rates vary substantially by the type of ACEs reported and the context or setting in which data were gathered. Yet, almost two thirds of youth experience significant adverse events no matter where they reside across the world, highlighting the need for local ACEs screening and early intervention. Implications for future research include the importance of clarifying ACEs exposure and measures used to quantify such events to allow for future aggregation (e.g., meta-analysis) of findings by country, context, population, or event type.

Preparing teachers to teach agricultural mechanics is a difficult task since many topic areas are included in the curriculum. This study examines the effect of the number of college courses taken on a teacher's perceived competence to teach agricultural mechanics. Agricultural education teachers in Iowa ranked themselves according to their perceived, individual competence in 54 skill areas associated with agricultural mechanics curricula. Respondents also indicated the number of agricultural mechanics courses they completed in their teacher preparation program. Teachers who completed one or no courses had low to slight perceived level of competence while teachers who took two or more courses identified a moderate level of perceived competence in agricultural mechanics. Teachers indicating six or more classes completed exhibited a high-perceived competence. A positive correlation was identified between courses completed and perceived competence as the more courses taken the higher the self-perceived competence level of the teacher. To develop the competence of pre-service agricultural education teacher candidates it is recommended to examine the current agricultural mechanics curricula in teacher preparation programs. It is further recommended that professional development be offered in areas identified by agricultural education teachers as having low perceived competence.

Current practices in study design and data analysis have led to low reproducibility and replicability of findings in fields such as psychology, medicine, biology, and economics. Because gifted education research relies on the same underlying statistical and sociological paradigms, it is likely that it too suffers from these problems. This article discusses the origin of the poor replicability and introduces a set of open science practices that can increase the rigor and trustworthiness of gifted education's scientific findings: preregistration, open data and open materials, registered reports, and preprints. Readers are directed to Internet resources for facilitating open science. To model these practices, a pre peer-review preprint of this article is available at https://psyarxiv.com/nhuv3/.

The primary goal of this paper is to present the theoretical basis and application of two types of cognitive maps, concept map and mind map, and explain how they can be used by educational researchers in engineering design research. Cognitive mapping techniques can be useful to researchers as they study students' problem solving strategies and cognitive processes. Students thrive when they are afforded problem solving opportunities in ill-structured domains that embrace inquiry and design. Not only do cognitive mapping techniques help qualitative researchers in the methodological challenge to reduce data to a manageable form without losing the embedded meaning, if used creatively they can allow researchers to see unique themes or patterns used in design problem solving. With the appropriate application of metrics, cognitive maps can also be used in quantitative data analysis. The examples highlighted in this paper illustrate how cognitive mapping techniques can be used effectively for quantitative data analysis. Its strength, however, exists in how it is able to aid the researcher to qualitatively analyze voluminous transcribed text data from expert and novices designers. While analyzing cognitive maps can be time consuming, properly constructed maps can illustrate how students categorize design concepts, display patterns in their cognitive strategy, and identify themes that emerge from the solving of design problems.

Course: Qualitative Research Methods. Objectives: To provide students with an experiential understanding of the six steps to conducting a thematic analysis: (1) gaining familiarity with the data, (2) creating coding categories or subcategories, (3) generating themes, (4) reviewing themes, (5) labeling themes, and (6) identifying exemplars. To help students understand the value of verification procedures: (1) peer debriefing, (2) referential adequacy, and (3) the audit trail.

We are currently at an exciting juncture in developing effective means for assessing so-called 21st-century skills in an innovative yet reliable fashion. One of these avenues leads through the world of "epistemic games" (Shaffer, 2006a), which are games designed to give learners the rich experience of professional practica within a discipline. They serve to develop domain-specific expertise based on principles of collaborative learning, distributed expertise, and complex problem-solving. In this paper, we describe a comprehensive research program for investigating the methodological challenges that await rigorous inquiry within the epistemic games context. We specifically demonstrate how the "evidence-centered design framework" (Mislevy, Almond, & Steinberg, 2003) as well as current conceptualizations of reliability and validity theory can be used to structure the development of epistemic games as well as empirical research into their functioning. Using the epistemic game "Urban Science" (Bagley & Shaffer, 2009), we illustrate the numerous decisions that need to be made during game development and their implications for amassing qualitative and quantitative evidence about learners' developing expertise within epistemic games. (Contains 4 figures.)

Systematic reviews often encounter primary studies that report multiple effect sizes based on data from the same participants. These have the potential to introduce statistical dependency into the meta-analytic data set. In this paper, we provide a tutorial on dealing with effect size multiplicity within studies in the context of meta-analyses of intervention and association studies, recommending a three-step approach. The first step is to define the research question and consider the extent to which it mainly reflects interest in mean effect sizes (which we term a "convergent" approach) or an interest in exploring heterogeneity (which we term a "divergent" approach). A second step is to identify the types of multiplicities that appear in the initial database of effect sizes relevant to the research question, and we propose a categorization scheme to differentiate them. The third step is to select a strategy for dealing with each type of multiplicity. The researcher can choose between a "reductionist" meta-analytic approach, which is characterized by inclusion of a single effect size per study, and an "integrative" approach, characterized by inclusion of multiple effect sizes per study. We present an overview of available analysis strategies for dealing with effect size multiplicity within studies and provide recommendations intended to help researchers decide which strategy might be preferable in particular situations. Last, we offer caveats and cautions about addressing the challenges multiplicity poses for systematic reviews and meta-analyses.

Purpose: Participatory extension programmes are widely used to promote change in the agricultural sector, and an important question is how best to measure the effectiveness of such programmes after implementation. This study seeks to understand the current state of practice through a review of ex post evaluations of participatory extension programmes. Design/methodology/approach: A systematic literature review of the peer-reviewed literature was undertaken to analyse the evaluations based on: (i) year of publication; (ii) location of the study; (iii) programme delivery; (iv) evaluation methods; (v) outcome variables; and (vi) inclusion of evaluation in initial programme design. Findings: The review finds that almost all studies use an experimental or quasi-experimental research design (i.e. using a control group or counterfactual), but some studies do not account for endogeneity or selection bias. Furthermore, only a small number of the evaluations were planned as part of the original programme design, which causes difficulties in obtaining robust counterfactuals. The review also finds that relatively few evaluations, approximately 20%, measure the programme impact on environmental outcomes and only 15% of the evaluations have been undertaken for programmes in developed countries. Practical implication: Limitations with current evaluation practice are identified, and recommendations are provided for improving practice, including better treatment of endogeneity, and the complementary use of qualitative data. Theoretical implication: The review provides a contribution to the debate about the use of quantitative versus qualitative evaluation methods, by addressing the use of both quantitative and qualitative evaluation methods in a complementary way. Originality/value: Despite their widespread implementation, this is the first systematic literature review for published evaluations of participatory extension programmes in the agricultural sector.

Since the first descriptions of design research (DR), there have been calls to better define it to increase its rigour. Yet five uncertainties remain: (1) the processes for conducting DR, (2) how DR differs from other forms of research, (3) how DR differs from design, (4) the products of DR, and (5) why DR can answer certain research questions more effectively than other methodologies. To resolve these uncertainties, we define educational design research as a meta-methodology conducted by education researchers to create practical interventions and theoretical design models through a design process of focusing, understanding, defining, conceiving, building, testing, and presenting, that recursively nests other research processes to iteratively search for empirical solutions to practical problems of human learning. By better articulating the logic of DR, researchers can more effectively craft, communicate, replicate, and teach DR as a useful and defensible research methodology.

There is no consensus among researchers on charter school effectiveness in the USA, in part because of discrepancies in the research methods employed across various studies. Causal impact estimates from experimental studies demonstrate large positive impacts, but concerns about the generalizability of these results have prompted the development of alternative methodologies for estimating charter impacts. Considerable attention has been paid to non-experimental national charter school studies conducted by the Stanford Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO). To reconcile conflicting findings in the charter school literature, this within-study analysis uses statewide data from Florida between 2001 and 2009, finding large differences in the estimated charter school effects for oversubscribed and undersubscribed schools. This helps explain why experimental studies often find charter impacts that are much larger than those reported by studies relying on non-experimental methods.

Following two-failed school bond issues in 1995 and 1998, one mid-sized rural school district organized an effort that led to two successful school bond elections in 2001 and 2003. The school district's strategic plan mirrored many of the recommendations for successful bond referendums published in School Bond Success: A Strategy for Building America's Schools. Findings from this case study, utilizing a Rapid Assessment Process, illustrate many of the reasons why the school district passed two consecutive bond issues with unprecedented community support. Although the findings from this school district may not match the concerns of all communities, it provides readers with a perspective of voters' beliefs in one rural school district. (Contains 3 tables.)

For many political science programs, research methods courses are a fundamental component of the recommended undergraduate curriculum. However, instructors and students often see these courses as the most challenging. This study explores when it is most appropriate for political science majors to enroll and pass a research methods course. The hypothesis posits that the number of prior introductory-level political science courses can be a strong precursor to research methods success, even for those who are upper-class students and majors. This hypothesis is tested by analyzing data from six sections of an undergraduate research course offered at a midsized public university. The results demonstrate that students are most likely to succeed in their research methods course if they are majors with at least five previous political sciences courses completed. Recommendations for course prerequisites and specific curriculum mapping are offered in light of these findings.