Education Research Questions Research Articles

The Dogma of Running Injuries: Perceptions of Adolescent and Adult Runners.

Adults perceive certain factors to increase or decrease the risk of sustaining running-related injuries, but many of their perceptions are not supported by research. Little is known about the perceptions that adolescent runners hold. Investigating perceptions for adolescent runners is needed to assist in the development of future injury educational materials, as these resources may need to be tailored differently for adolescents and adults. To identify factors that adolescent runners perceive as risk or protective factors for running-related injuries and to compare these perceptions with those of adult runners. Cross-sectional study. Online survey. We surveyed 302 adolescent (164 females, 138 males; age = 16.0 ± 1.4 years [range, 12-19 years]) and 357 adult runners (197 women, 160 men; age = 40.7 ± 11.8 years [range, 20-77 years]). Participants completed a survey with questions about whether factors related to training habits, footwear, biomechanics, strength, stretching, or nutrition influence the risk of sustaining a running-related injury. If ≥75% of adolescents indicated that a factor increases or decreases the risk of sustaining an injury, we considered that factor to be a perceived risk or protective factor, respectively. We also performed Fisher's exact test to compare the proportion of adolescent and adult runners who responded with "increase," "decrease," "neither increase or decrease," or "I don't know" to each question. Adolescent runners perceived training habits, footwear, biomechanics, strength, stretching, and nutrition to increase or decrease the risk of sustaining a running-related injury. A larger proportion of adolescents than adults perceived that more footwear cushioning and stretching decrease injury risk, but a smaller proportion perceived that overtraining increases injury risk and strength decreases injury risk. Differences in perceptions exist between adolescent and adult runners, and future educational materials and research questions may need to be tailored for different running populations.

Basic mathematical skills and fraction understanding predict percentage understanding: Evidence from an intelligent tutoring system

Research on fostering learning about percentages within intelligent tutoring systems (ITSs) is limited. Additionally, there is a lack of data‐driven approaches for improving the design of ITS to facilitate learning about percentages. To address these gaps, we first investigated whether students' understanding of basic mathematical skills (eg, arithmetic, measurement units and geometry) and fractions within an ITS predicts their understanding of percentages. We then applied a psychological network analysis to evaluate interdependencies within the data on 44 subtopics of basic mathematical concepts, fractions and percentages. We leveraged a large‐scale dataset consisting of 2798 students using the ITS bettermarks and working on approximately 4.1 million mathematical problems. We found that advanced arithmetic, measurement units, geometry and fraction understanding significantly predicted percentage understanding. Closer inspection indicated that percentage understanding was best predicted by problems sharing similar features, such as fraction word problems and fraction/natural number multiplication/division problems. Our findings suggest that practitioners and software developers may consider revising specific subtopics which share features with percentage problems for students struggling with percentages. More broadly, our study demonstrates how evaluating interdependencies between subtopics covered within an ITS as a data‐driven approach can provide practical insights for improving the design of ITSs. Practitioner notesWhat is already known about this topic Longitudinal studies showed that basic mathematical skills predict fraction understanding. There is only limited evidence on whether similar predictions can be observed for percentage understanding—in general and within intelligent tutoring systems. Process data from such intelligent tutoring systems can be leveraged to pursue both educational research questions and optimizing digital learning software. Problems involving percentages typically are word problems requiring multiplications and/or divisions. What this paper adds Similar to the case of fractions, students' performance on advanced arithmetic, measurement units and geometry significantly predicted performance with percentages. Students' performance with fractions also predicted performance with percentages significantly. A psychological network analysis was applied to evaluate specific interdependencies between a range of subtopics (eg, Multiplying and dividing fractions, Adding and subtracting fractions and Calculating with percentages). Fraction word problems and fraction problems involving multiplication/division turned out to be the best predictors of understanding percentages. Implications for practice and/or policy When facing difficulties with percentages, revision of previous mathematical concepts sharing similar features (eg, fraction word problems, fraction/natural number multiplication/division problems) may be advised. Software developers may consider implementing such data‐driven revision recommendations for students facing difficulties within intelligent tutor systems. Psychological network analysis can be utilized as a learning analytics method for easy‐to‐access visualizations illustrating relationships between a large range of different subtopics.

Impact of Environmental Factors on Student’s Educational Background and Their Future Performance

This study examine the impact of environmental factors on student’s educational background and their future performance among 500 male and female students of high school classes four tehsils of district Bhakkar. Environmental factors have both type of impacts positive and negative impacts on students educational development and their future development such as physical, moral, Socioeconomic status , Parental involvement and Peer influences .In this study objectives were to investigate (1).Identifying strategies to create a conducive learning environment (3) Developing interventions to mitigate negative environmental impacts (4) Raising awareness about the importance of environmental factors in education hypotheses and research questions were designed for the purpose of testing and answering through the collected empirical data from the sample group and these objectives testified by hypotheses. The population of the study included all the govt high school from which the researcher selected 500 respondents through stratified random sampling techniques. The design selected for the study was survey. The researcher designed research instruments for data collection from the respondents of the study, one was a Likert scale questionnaire

Mixed methods research in open distance learning: a content analysis of the literature

ABSTRACT Mixed-methods research, which facilitates both the explanation and understanding of a phenomenon in a single study, is gaining popularity in many disciplines as a third methodological approach. The purpose of this article is to determine the prevalence of mixed methods research in distance education, and to demonstrate its potential contribution as a methodological approach in addressing distance education research questions. Investigating methodological practices in a cognitive field is a growing line of inquiry. A review of the literature yielded limited results on its use in open distance learning. A content analysis was conducted to identify articles that utilised mixed methods research in researching open distance learning. The findings show that mixed methods research is relevant and can be applied to conduct research. However, the adoption and use of mixed methods research in distance education is limited. Although this study has methodological limitations, it presents a methodological approach that can help reduce the gap that exists between positivist and interpretivist epistemologies in relation to distance education research. An investigation of the prevalence and use of the mixed methods approach in distance education raises awareness of its methodological characteristics and advantages.

Research Initiatives in Accounting Education: Transforming Today's Students into Accounting Professionals

ABSTRACTAccounting education is part of the causal chains that produce every accounting outcome of interest to researchers and practitioners because of its power to determine which people become accountants and to shape their traits through training. In this essay, I characterize the trait-shaping power of accounting education using a framework I call the “selection/transformation framework.” I then show how this framework can facilitate the generation of important, novel accounting education research questions using the examples of materialistic values among accounting students, the underrepresentation of Black people in audit firms, and the communication skills of accounting graduates. The research program I advocate would require the use of a variety of methods, but my examples focus on archival methods because of my familiarity with them and their relatively infrequent use in the accounting education literature.

Special issue: Ethical questions in educational research

Special issue: Ethical questions in educational research

Content Analysis of Textbooks via Natural Language Processing: Findings on Gender, Race, and Ethnicity in Texas U.S. History Textbooks

Cutting-edge data science techniques can shed new light on fundamental questions in educational research. We apply techniques from natural language processing (lexicons, word embeddings, topic models) to 15 U.S. history textbooks widely used in Texas between 2015 and 2017, studying their depiction of historically marginalized groups. We find that Latinx people are rarely discussed, and the most common famous figures are nearly all White men. Lexicon-based approaches show that Black people are described as performing actions associated with low agency and power. Word embeddings reveal that women tend to be discussed in the contexts of work and the home. Topic modeling highlights the higher prominence of political topics compared with social ones. We also find that more conservative counties tend to purchase textbooks with less representation of women and Black people. Building on a rich tradition of textbook analysis, we release our computational toolkit to support new research directions.

Re-mapping the territory: an overview of learning and literacy intervention provision in Australian primary education

ABSTRACT This paper provides data on patterns of schools’ learning intervention provision in 2017, and discusses the utility of online sources to gather this information. Demographic, achievement, and intervention data were collected for a sample of 366 schools offering primary education across Australia’s five more populous states. Intervention offerings were analysed in relation to schools’ demographic and achievement characteristics. General academic and literacy interventions were commonly offered, with statistically significant differences identified between the reported intervention offerings of schools in different states and sectors. Report of offering intervention/s was not associated with either schools’ size or levels of NAPLAN achievement. The results are compared with the 1998 “Survey of Schools” on primary students with learning difficulties in Australia, and discussed in relation to research literature and educational policy. Future directions for: a) research into intervention provision in Australian schools; and b) utilizing online sources to explore educational research questions are identified.

Investigating physiotherapy stakeholders’ preferences for the development of performance-based assessment in practice education

ObjectivesDiscrete choice experiments (DCEs) are used in healthcare to measure the relative importance that stakeholders give to different features (or attributes) of medical treatments or services. They may also help to address research questions in health professional education. Several challenges exist regarding the performance-based assessment process (PBA) employed in physiotherapy practice-based education, a process which determines students’ readiness for independent practice. Evidence highlights many commonalities among these challenges, but it is unknown which factors are the most important to stakeholders. The use of DCE methodology may provide answers and help to prioritise areas for development. Thus, this study employed DCE to identify clinical educators’, practice tutors and physiotherapy students’ preferences for developing the PBA process in physiotherapy. DesignAttributes (aspects of the PBA process known to be important to stakeholders) were derived from focus group interviews conducted with three groups; physiotherapy students, clinical educators (practising clinicians) and practice tutors (dedicated educational roles in the workplace). These attributes included the PBA tool, grading mechanisms, assessors involved, and, feedback mechanisms. Preferences for each group were calculated using a logistic regression model. ResultsSeventy-two students, 124 clinical educators and 49 practice tutors (n=245) participated. Priorities identified centred primarily on the mandatory inclusion of two assessors in the PBA process and on refinement of the PBA tool. ConclusionEmployment of DCE enabled the prioritisation of stakeholder-informed challenges related to PBA in physiotherapy practice-based education. This corroborates findings from previous qualitative work and facilitates a prioritised pathway for development of this process.

This fast car can move faster: a review of PLS-SEM application in higher education research

The relevance and prominence of the partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) method has recently increased in higher education research, especially in explanatory and predictive studies. We therefore first aim to assess previous PLS-SEM applications by providing a systematic review; second, we aim to highlight and summarize important guidelines for conducting a rigorous PLS-SEM analysis of the current state of results reporting in higher education journals. Specifically, this study focuses on empirical PLS-SEM applications in 14 major higher education journals indexed in the Thomson Reuters Web of Science and in the Elsevier-Scopus databases between 1999 and 2018. We initially identified 49 relevant papers published in 10 higher education journals. Based on these papers’ generally followed guidelines, we thereafter identified various issues related to data screening, model characteristics, measurement model evaluation, structural model evaluation, and the application of state-of-the-art PLS-SEM advanced methods requiring particular attention. Furthermore, we recommend recent guidelines to improve PLS-SEM applications and practices, besides providing specific suggestions regarding utilizing the method’s strength in terms of relevant higher education research questions. Our findings remind researchers, reviewers, and journal editors to remain vigilant, should help them avoid inaccuracies in future publications, and ensure rigor.

Posing Fundable Questions in Mathematics and Science Education

In this article, the authors describe critical issues related to the pursuit of rigorous and innovative research in the fields of mathematics and science education. The paper is framed to help researchers consider aspects of both their research project and their research proposal. The authors describe features of high-quality and fundable research projects and whether the research is intended to support descriptive, design-oriented, or causal interpretation. They discuss the critical role of grounding proposed research in existing literatures; attending to relevant research from associated fields; and posing research questions that are clear, specific, and feasibly addressable. The goals of the research should cohere with the methodological and analytic design proposed. The authors also discuss the multidisciplinary nature of research that has implications for practice in general and for educational practice more specifically. The authors touch on the characteristics of more and less successful interdisciplinary research teams, especially those that draw from education, cognitive science, methodology, educational psychology, the learning sciences, and relevant STEM disciplinary fields. Examples of STEM education research questions from different genres of research are considered and the authors describe how the questions themselves give rise to specific design choices, methodologies, measures, study samples, and analytical models as well as how they can reflect the disciplinary orientations of the researchers. Implications of these issues for successful educational research grant proposal writing are discussed.

Posing New Researchable Questions as a Dynamic Process in Educational Research

In this paper, we argue that posing new researchable questions in educational research is a dynamic process that reflects the field’s growing understanding of the web of potentially influential factors surrounding the examination of a particular phenomenon of interest. We illustrate this thesis by drawing on a strand of mathematics education research related to students’ justification schemes that has evolved rapidly during the past few decades. Also, we reflect on the possible boundaries of the domain of application of the thesis, and we hypothesize that it would apply equally to other strands of educational research. To support this hypothesis, we briefly consider how the thesis would be applicable in two additional research strands. We conclude by elaborating on three important implications of the thesis: (1) as new potentially influential factors about the phenomenon of interest are identified, findings from past research that had not accounted for those factors might prove to be insufficient or be put into question; (2) there are increased methodological challenges for researchers as they seek to design new studies that pay due regard to research advances about all relevant and potentially influential factors surrounding the phenomenon of interest; and (3) as a wider range of potentially influential factors get discovered and considered about a particular phenomenon, research knowledge becomes not only more refined, and presumably more accurate, but possibly more fragmented too.

Overview and Prospect of Autoethnography in Pharmacy Education and Practice

Objective. To provide an overview of autoethnography as a valuable qualitative methodology in the human and health sciences and to endorse its use to answer meaningful research questions in pharmacy education and assist with the preparation of person-centered pharmacists. Findings. Today, pharmacists must participate in the health care system as care providers rather than simply drug dispensers. The call for change, which began with the evolution of clinical pharmacy and continued with the introduction of pharmaceutical care practice in the 1990s, is still proving to be dramatic for the profession. Thus, new problems are surfacing demanding new types of research questions and new ways of answering them. Autoethnography is a qualitative methodology that combines the principles of ethnography and autobiography in a way that highlights researchers' reflexivity and subjectivity. The paper describes autoethnography, its diverse forms (eg, evocative or analytical), the process of producing it, and associated standards of high-quality work. It presents autoethnographies carried out in health care research as well as in pharmacy, pointing to the usefulness of this methodology to produce meaningful investigations that can enrich the preparation of future pharmacists and advance the profession. Summary. Autoethnography is gaining recognition in many disciplines in health care. Even though it is still incipient in pharmacy, autoethnography can expand pharmacy students' and pharmacists' consciousness regarding their own situation and open the possibility for pursuing research that might enhance the lives of others and themselves.

Exploring the use of network meta-analysis in education: examining the correlation between ORF and text complexity measures.

Calls for empirical investigations of the Common Core standards (CCSSs) for English Language Arts have been widespread, particularly in the area of text complexity in the primary grades (e.g., Hiebert & Mesmer Educational Research, 42(1), 44-51, 2013). The CCSSs mention that qualitative methods (such as Fountas and Pinnell) and quantitative methods (such as Lexiles) can be used to gauge text complexity (CCSS Initiative, 2010). However, researchers have questioned the validity of these tools for several decades (e.g., Hiebert & Pearson, 2010). In an effort to establish criterion validity of these tools, individual studies have compared how well they correlate with actual student reading performance measures, most commonly reading comprehension and/or oral-reading fluency (ORF). ORF is a key aspect of reading success and as such is often used for progress monitoring purposes. However, to date, studies have not been able to evaluate different text complexity tools and relation to reading outcomes across studies. This is challenging because the pair-wise meta-analytic model is not able to synthesize several independent variables that differ both within and across studies. Therefore, it is unable to answer pressing research questions in education, such as, which text complexity tool is most correlated with student ORF (and, thus, a good measure of text difficulty)? This question is timely given that the Common Core State Standards explicitly mention various text complexity tools; yet, the validity of such tools has been repeatedly questioned by researchers. This article provides preliminary evidence to answer that question using an approach borrowed from the field of medicine-Network Meta-Analysis (NMA; Lumley Statistics in Medicine, 21, 2313-2324, 2002). A systematic search yielded 5 studies using 19 different text complexity tools with ORF as the reading outcome measured. Both a frequentist and Bayesian NMA were conducted to pool the correlations of a given text complexity tool with students' ORF. While the results differed slightly across the two approaches, there is preliminary evidence in support of the hypothesis that text complexity tools which incorporate more fine-grained sub-lexical variables were more strongly correlated with student outcomes. While the results of this example cannot be generalized due to the low sample size, this article shows how NMA is a promising new analytic tool for synthesizing educational research.

Theoretical Framing as Justifying

In our March editorial (Cai et al., 2019), we discussed the nature of significant research questions in mathematics education. We asserted that the choice of a suitable theoretical framework is critical to establishing the significance of a research question. In this editorial, we continue our series on high-quality research in mathematics education by elaborating on how a well-constructed theoretical framework strengthens a research study and the reporting of research for publication. In particular, we describe how the theoretical framework provides a connecting thread that ties together all of the parts of a research report into a coherent whole. Specifically, the theoretical framework should help (a) make the case for the purpose of a study and shape the literature review; (b) justify the study design and methods; and (c) focus and guide the reporting, interpretation, and discussion of results and their implications.

Transforming a practice-based problem into research questions

Purpose This paper describes and discusses aspects that affect research questions in a practice-based research study, where learning study is used as a framework. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to understanding of the process where teachers and a researcher collaborate in transforming practical teaching problems into research questions. Design/methodology/approach A case study is conducted. Data consist of field notes, logbooks, manuscripts and conference papers from two learning studies conducted in grade 4 by three teachers and one researcher, and notes from meetings in a subject-teacher group at the school. The analysis focuses on how the research questions emerge and change in relation to discussions among teachers and in the research group of teaching, previous research and learning theory. Findings Questions about students’ discernment of the structure in the base-ten system emerged in learning study 1 and in the subject-teacher group. Discussions of previous research and the didactical theory learning activity transformed the research questions in learning study 2, into focusing students’ theoretical knowledge, examining general structures in the base system, using learning models as tools. Conditions for identification of specific teaching problems and alternative theory in a learning study are discussed. Originality/value The explicit example where research questions are transformed can be used in further discussions and methodological questions regarding formulation of research questions in educational research. Discussions, specifically of transforming research questions, when learning study is used may be promoted.

Development and Implementation of the Inaugural Anatomy Education Research Institute (AERI 2017).

Education research is increasingly being recognized as a legitimate route for faculty development in universities. However, many anatomy faculty lack the appropriate training and access to experienced mentors who can help them develop their own education research projects. Inspired by the American Physiological Society's Institute for Teaching and Learning, the coauthors proposed and developed the inaugural Anatomy Education Research Institute (AERI 2017). Funded by an American Association of Anatomists Innovations grant, the five-day institute was held in Bloomington, Indiana in July 2017. The coauthors spent two years preparing the conference schedule, inviting speakers who could discuss education research topics and mentor applicants, reviewing applications, developing assessment instruments for the institute, and hosting the institute. A total of 62 registered participants (applicants and invited speakers) attended AERI 2017. Through a series of presentations and workshops, participants were introduced to many aspects of education research and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, including developing rigorous education research questions, determining appropriate methods to assess these questions, and searching the education research literature. Each day also included regular time devoted to work on their own education research project with help from more experienced mentors. Throughout the conference, participants were encouraged to post information on Twitter, using the hashtag #AERI2017. Participants had strong positive impressions of the conference and strongly requested future AERI conferences be held. Follow-up analyses will assess the institute in alignment with Kirkpatrick's Four Levels of Evaluation Model, though preliminary evaluation indicates AERI 2017 met the original aims of the proposal.

Development and Validation of an Assessment Instrument for Course Experience in a General Education Integrated Science Course

ABSTRACT Identifying instruments and surveys to address geoscience education research (GER) questions is among the high-ranked needs in a 2016 survey of the GER community (St. John et al., 2016). The purpose of this study was to develop and validate a student-centered assessment instrument to measure course experience in a general education integrated science course. A one-shot case study of pre-experimental design (Creswell, 2009, 2014) was used to understand student experiences in a large-enrollment course with digital content integration, including out-of-class video, online presentations, and warm-up questions, as well as in-class video paired with discussion and small group activities. In two sections taught by the same geoscientist, 209 students accessed course content in an online learning management system prior to classroom instruction. We adapted the 36-item Course Experience Questionnaire (CEQ; Wilson et al., 1997) to a Web-based survey. We conducted statistical analysis on the CEQ responses, including item factor analysis, examination of communalities and measures of association, confirmatory factor analysis, and reliability and stability testing through bootstrap resampling. The statistical analyses indicate that the results in this study are comparable to those from other cultural contexts and subject areas. Given the moderate fit of the model and reasonably stable results, we propose that the core indicators of the CEQ constructs, including Appropriate Workload, Clear Goals and Standards, Generic Skills, Good Teaching, and Emphasis on Independence are sufficient to assess students' course experiences in general education science settings. These results provided moderately to strongly valid information that can help instructors in designing their technology-integrated classes, although further study with a larger sample population would be beneficial. From this study we conclude that students' perceptions of their course experiences are closely related to their development of problem-solving and analytical skills, clear course expectations to direct their own study plans, their preference for a motivating instructor, the opportunity to have a variety of learning choices, and their workload. We propose the use of a 25-item version of the CEQ that is appropriate for formative assessment in discipline-specific STEM introductory classes, including geoscience classes.

British Society of Gastroenterology position statement on serrated polyps in the colon and rectum

Serrated polyps have been recognised in the last decade as important premalignant lesions accounting for between 15% and 30% of colorectal cancers. There is therefore a clinical need for guidance...

The potential of neuroscience for health sciences education: towards convergence of evidence and resisting seductive allure.

Since emergence of the field ‘Educational Neuroscience’ (EN) in the late nineties of the previous century, a debate has emerged about the potential this field holds to influence teaching and learning in the classroom. By now, most agree that the original claims promising direct translations to teaching and learning were too strong. I argue here that research questions in (health professions) education require multi-methodological approaches, including neuroscience, while carefully weighing what (combination of) approaches are most suitable given a research question. Only through a multi-methodological approach will convergence of evidence emerge, which is so desperately needed for improving teaching and learning in the classroom. However, both researchers and teachers should become aware of the so-called ‘seductive allure’ of EN; that is, the demonstrable physical location and apparent objectivity of the measurements can be interpreted as yielding more powerful evidence and warranting stronger conclusions than, e.g., behavioral experiments, where in fact oftentimes the reverse is the case. I conclude that our tendency as researchers to commit ourselves to one methodological approach and to addressing educational research questions from a single methodological perspective is limiting progress in educational science and in translation to education.