The federal government's No Child Left Behind Act has thrust high-stakes testing - its goals, methods, and consequences - into the educational limelight. The four-fold purpose of this book is to: describe the nature of high-stakes testing; identify types of collateral damage that have attended the testing programs; analyze methods different groups of people have chosen for coping with the damage and suggest lessons to be learned from the high-stakes-testing experience.

The six groups of people whose coping strategies are inspected include: politicians and their staffs; educational...

Emphasizing the comparative aspects of research, this introduction to educational research traces the process through five stages--choosing what to study, including specifying the research problem; collecting information; organizing and summarizing information; interpreting results; and reporting the outcomes. Each of the stages offers diverse options available to researchers for solving the problems of that stage, and a research project checklist at the end of each chapter guides readers in applying the chapter's contents to their own research studies.

In much educational discourse,...

Emphasizing the comparative aspects of research, this introduction to educational research traces the process through five stages--choosing what to study, including specifying the research problem; collecting information; organizing and summarizing information; interpreting results; and reporting the outcomes. Each of the stages offers diverse options available to researchers for solving the problems of that stage, and a research project checklist at the end of each chapter guides readers in applying the chapter's contents to their own research studies.

In much educational discourse,...

This book guides students through the process of planning, researching, and writing the final version of theses and dissertations. Five major stages of the process are illustrated with multiple examples from the social and behavioral sciences, humanities, and such allied fields as education, social work, and business administration. The first stage, Preparing the Way, describes problems and alternative solutions in working with faculty advisors and in searching the professional literature. Stage 2 explains how to find good research topics and define them clearly for presentation to faculty...

Being aware of thesis and dissertation pitfalls can help the graduate student make efficient use of resources available to him or her and bring precision to research and writing of that important project. The authors present 61 cases cast as an envisioned conversation between a student and a professor whom the student consults about a problem.

The cases are presented within ten chapters that proceed through a sequence of typical stages in the production of a thesis or dissertation. Chapter titles include Choosing and Defining a Research Topic, Searching the Professional Literature,...

Schools in the United States have historically banned many different things. From clothing to weapons, from cell phones to books, schools have implemented various types of censorship and restrictions on their students for a variety of reasons and with a variety of results. This book's purpose is to describe the various things banned in schools, the reasons behind attempts to ban such things, the types of people who approve of censoring those things and the types who do not, the outcome of representative cases of censorship, and suggestions for school personnel about how to cope with bans....