Faculty Briefs...

Current research, writing, and reports from the field.

 
  • What constitutes good educational research? Considerations for graduate education

Kelly D. Bradley, University of Kentucky,
James W. Bradley, Bluegrass Community and Technical College,
Jessica D. Cunningham, University of Kentucky

Graduate students are inundated with and trained to be well-versed in elements associated with research. A consideration of what represents or comprises good educational research from the students perspective may offer insights into the way faculty do and should deliver topics related to research in the realm of ethics, methods, and theories. This research focuses on the College of Education graduate student responses, n = 76, to a survey inspired by an article published in the Educational Researcher (Hostetler, 2005). The primary goal of the study was to reveal the characteristics that are most frequently endorsed by students and to identify areas of disagreement, or misfit utilizing a Rasch measurement model. Student responses are compared to faculty responses within the same college, using Bradley, Royal, Cunningham, Weber and Eli (2008), original framework as a guide. Key findings include misfitting items related to efficiency in selecting research methods and the weight of reliability, validity and trustworthiness in research. In general, the ethics and theory items had average person measures that did not increase across the rating scale, which ranged from strongly disagree to strongly agree; specifically, unexpected respondents endorsed these items. The hierarchy of items demonstrates that students have the most difficult time endorsing methods items. Finally, it appears that DIF exists between the faculty and student responses. Implications for Higher Education will be discussed, including potential impact on teaching and mentoring.  (Read More)

 Prepared for the 2009 College Teaching and Learning Conference, San Antonio, TX

  •  A pilot study of applying the R language to regression model selection with ICOMP.
Hongwei (Patrick) Yang, University of Kentucky,
Hamparsum Bozdogan, University of Tennessee

This is a methodology study that explores the use of Bozdogans ICOMP criteria in regression model selection under the R environment. The study compares ICOMP with such well established criteria as AIC, CAIC, SBC, etc., in terms of model selection performance using repeated, random sample data sets generated from Monte Carol simulations. All analyses are coded using R. Because R is free and has packages in structural equation modeling and item response theory, the study aims to promote the use of ICOMP and serve as the basis for future research on applying these new model selection criteria to more general psychometric analyses. To read more click on the link below:

 (EPE/sites/education.uky.edu.EPE/files/ICOMPBased_Regression_Model_Selection_in_R.pdf)

 

Karen Tice, Associate Professor

Karen W. Tice is an associate professor of educational policy studies and evaluation who teaches courses in gender and education, student cultures, popular culture, gender, social reform, and activism, and feminist theory. Her publications include Tales of Wayward Girls: Case Records and the Professionalization of Social Work (Illinois, 1998) which examined the construction of professional authority in social work and how the writing of case narratives by white middle-class women reformers in their interactions with working class and immigrant women created clients and authorities, as well as discourses of racialized and classed deviancy and normality.

In addition to articles on gender, social reform and settlement schools in Eastern Kentucky,  she has published articles in Feminist Studies, Journal of Women’s History, Gender & Society, Feminist Teacher, Journal of Appalachian Studies, and Genders and book chapters in edited collections including Mediating Faiths: Religion, Media, and Popular Culture on feminist activism, beauty pageants, student cultures,  and higher education, beauty pageants in the mountain south, born-again Christian beauty queens, and Reality TV makeover shows.

Her book, “Queens of Academe: Beauty, Bodies, and Campus Life, 1920-Present,” on campus beauty pageants and students cultures on historically black and predominantly white college campuses in the United States explores campus body politics, cultural identities, belonging, and student life, and is forthcoming from Oxford University Press.

Beth Goldstein

Research Profile:

Dr. Beth Goldstein’s research revolves around interests in gender, family literacy, and educational border crossing in US and Asian contexts.  Related to this, much of her work has also entailed the application of research to program development and evaluation in adult basic education, teacher professional development and Asian studies.  Current research includes a decision-theoretic project with computer scientists that focused on welfare-to-work case managers for the case study and a multi-year evaluation with Dr. Eric Reed of READ KY, a statewide pilot project in basic literacy for adults.  She is the Kentucky director of the National Consortium for Teaching about Asia, a professional development program for middle and high school teachers to help them integrate Asian studies across the secondary school curriculum.  Most recently she has been working with colleges of education in Sumatra, Indonesia to revise their teacher preparation programs.

  • Cynthia Isenhour and Beth Goldstein (2008) “The Welfare Contract and Critical Case Management” Journal of Poverty 12(1):1-26

Drawing on three years of ethnographic research on the decision making processes of welfare case managers in urban Kentucky, we focus here on a group of case managers who subvert the demands placed on them by neoliberal welfare policy.  These women refer to their own experiences as low-income, single parents to reconceptualize notions of the “un/deserving” poor, the welfare contract, and what it means to be “self-sufficient.”  Case manager resistance and moral constructs are instructional, making explicit the dehumanizing aspects of the system and valuing a rights-based discourse which recognizes the state’s obligation to ensure the welfare of all citizens.

 

 
 
updated 08-15-2011 by Amberly Warnke
University of Kentucky College of Education