Understanding and Evaluating Educational Research

For courses in Research Methods in Education. Understanding and Evaluating Research, third edition, is a supplemental textbook appropriate for all courses in educational research. A reader, this text contains quantitative and qualitative educational research articles from a variety of professional journals. With each article is a sample article analysis and exercises that help students become better consumers of research. The third edition is greatly enhanced by the inclusion of a new chapter on “Mixed Method Designs” and two mixed-method studies, revised and expanded discussion of qualitative methods, more emphasis given to randomized designs, revision of research typology, and features eight new articles.

Features

• NEW! Revision of research typology discussed in the first chapter
• Readers gain useful insight on how to classify research studies, and present criteria by which all educational research should be judged.
• NEW! Addition of a chapter on Mixed-Method Designs (Chapter 5), and two mixed-method studies.
• NEW! Revised and expanded discussion of qualitative methods and designs.
• Includes characteristics of mixed-method designs and the criteria for how this type of research should be evaluated.
• NEW! Eight new articles on descriptive quantitative non-experimental designs.
• NEW! The most current, relevant articles included from a wide variety of journals and of varied reading levels. Promotes student appreciation of the diversity of published research.
• Representing both quantitative and qualitative methods, selected articles have been published within the past five years, representing a diverse range of topics found in education (e.g., educational administration, counseling, special education, curriculum, adult education, early childhood education).
• NEW! More emphasis is placed on randomized designs for the published articles found in each chapter.
• Credibility scorecard-Provides a scale designed to spark class discussion.
• Assists students in evaluating each component of an article.
• Coverage of important topics-Includes analytical research methods, qualitative methods and designs, descriptive quantitative nonexperimental designs, and graphic presentations of data.
• Research flow chart.Helps students understand the different types of educational research and the terminology associated with each type.
• Concept overview-Opens each chapter.
• Gives students definitions of key concepts and ideas associated with each kind of research.
• Evaluation criteria-Closes each article.
• Lists criteria for evaluation with the authors’ answers so students can see how to analyze each article.
• Questions for discussion-Provided for each article.
• Facilitates class discussion of the important concepts for each study.
• NEW! Revision of research typology discussed in the first chapter
• Readers gain useful insight on how to classify research studies, and present criteria by which all educational research should be judged.
• NEW! Addition of a chapter on Mixed-Method Designs (Chapter 5), and two mixed-method studies.
• NEW! Revised and expanded discussion of qualitative methods and designs.
• Includes characteristics of mixed-method designs and the criteria for how this type of research should be evaluated.
• NEW! Eight new articles on descriptive quantitative non-experimental designs.
• NEW! The most current, relevant articles included from a wide variety of journals and of varied reading levels.
• Selected articles have been published within the past five years, representing a diverse range of topics found in education (e.g., educational administration, counseling, special education, curriculum, adult education, early childhood education).
• More emphasis is placed on randomized designs for the published articles found in each chapter.