Educational Research Fundamentals for the Consumer

by McMillan, James H.

• ISBN13: 9780132596473
• ISBN10: 0132596474
• Edition: 6th
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-03-21
• Publisher: Pearson

Summary

This book educates students to become intelligent consumers of educational research and introduces basic research principles to those who may eventually use research in their work. Principles for conducting research and criteria for evaluating its overall credibility are presented in a concise manner, with numerous excerpts from published studies, to enable students to learn to read, understand, and evaluate research, and judge the usefulness of the findings for educational practice. There is extensive use of aides to facilitate student learning, including chapter objectives, roadmaps and concept maps, study questions, consumer tips, over 150 examples from published articles (also includes full length articles), and author reflections. The Sixth Edition includes a more extensive presentation of experimental and quasi-experimental design, consistent with the current emphasis on conducting "scientific research," qualitative data analysis, effect size, and two new chapters devoted to mixed-method studies and action research.

Author Biography

James H. McMillan is professor and chair of foundations of education at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia, where he teaches educational research and assessment courses and directs the Research and Evaluation Track of the PhD in education program. He is also director of the Metropolitan Ed­ucational Research Consortium, a partnership of Virginia Commonwealth University and seven Richmond-area school divisions that conducts and disseminates action and applied research. His current research interests include classroom and large-scale assessment. He has recently published the third edition of Classroom Assessment: Principles and Practice for Effective Standards-Based Instruction and edited Formative Classroom Assessment: Theory into Practice. He has authored three educa­tional research methods textbooks and published numerous articles in journals, including the American Educational Research Journal, the Journal of Educational Psychology, Contemporary Educational Psychology, and Educa­tional Measurement: Issues and Practice.

Table of Contents

To the Instructor

To the Student

 

Chapter 1: Introduction to Research in Education

 

Chapter 2: Research Problems, Variables, and Hypothesis

 

Chapter 3: Locating and Reviewing Related Literature

 

Chapter 4: Participants and Sampling

 

Chapter 5: Foundations of Educaitonal Measurement

 

Chapter 6: Data Collection Techniques

 

Chapter 7: Nonexperimental Quantitative Reseearch Designs

 

Chapter 8: Experimental Research Designs

 

Chapter 9: Understanding Statistical Inferences

 

Chapter 10: Qualitative Research Designs, Data Collection, and Analysis

 

Chapter 11: Mixed-Method Designs

 

Chapter 12: Action Research

 

Chapter 13: Discussion and Conclustions

 

Chapter 14: The Intelligent Consumer - Putting It All Together

 

References

Credits

Index