and Vaughn (2007) examined 74 articles reporting nonintervention studies (i.e., studies with no researcher-manipulated variables) that appeared in 5 educational journals in 1994. Of these articles, 22 contained prescriptive statements (e.g., if teachers or students did X, then student outcome Y would result). In the present study, we examined 243 journal articles published between 1995 and 2005 that cited any of the 22 earlier studies and found that (a) 25 articles (10%) repeated the prescriptive statement and (b) 411 subsequent articles between 2005 and mid-2008 cited the 25 articles that contained repeated prescriptions, with 1 article alone cited 132 times. Thus, recommendations based on nonintervention research were found, to some extent, to be perpetuated by educational researchers. Implications of these findings for educational researchers and consumers are discussed, as well as future directions for this type of research.
Goal orientation theory has been widely investigated and found to affect many motivation and behavior variables in relation to student learning and work performance. However, unlike the motivational construct of self-efficacy, researchers have yet to investigate whether this theory can be applied to the field of teaching and contribute to the explanation for trends in instructional behavior and motives. The purpose of the present study was to develop an instrument to begin the exploration of teachers' goal orientation towards teaching. From a three-phase research design consisting of scale development, score validation, and convergent/discriminant validation, results provided support for the development of, and validity of scores on, a Goal Orientation towards Teaching (GOTT) Scale. Although further validation is needed, future researchers and practitioners can use the GOTT scale to investigate how teachers' goal orientation towards teaching can impact student learning, teaching effectiveness, pedagogical learning, and even professional morale.
While autobiographical narratives andcase study reflections remain vital tofaculty development research, wemustalso make substantive efforts tobuild theory in our field. Researchers making claims about collective meanings ofobserved behaviors andthe mechanisms thatunderlie them (i.e; theoretical claims about social behavior) mustbedisciplined in howthey identify andorganize the evidence they use to support those claims. Such systematic, inductive theory-building inthe social sciences iscalled ''grounded theory" research. This chapter presents thebasics ofgrounded theory research, describes agrounded theory research program currently being executed byfaculty developers, andoffers practical tips especiallyfor faculty developers.
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