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Counting Progress with Semesters
Summer is a precarious time for scholars, young and old. During spring doldrums, when everything is most chaotic, summer becomes a hopeful respite. We long for more time to finish a few articles,...
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Rush to Relevance: Conducting Research to Improve Policy and Practice
“We need research to be more relevant” is a common clarion call in education. Most recently, John Easton, Director of IES, released a video for AERA in which he talks about different initiatives to...
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Sitting at Some New Tables in the Academic Cafeteria
As Murray Milner documents in Freaks, Geeks, and Cool Kids, teenagers often order themselves using status symbols. Take a stroll around a high school cafeteria. With few exceptions, students clump...
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How Do Scholars Produce Policy Relevant Research?
As I mentioned in my last post, I was named as an Emerging Education Policy Scholar (EEPS). The program, a collaboration between The Thomas B. Fordham Institute and the American Enterprise Institute,...
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Why Scholars Should Use Big and Little Data to Study Complex Issues
Last week, I read an article in the Chronicle about the growth of data-related graduate programs. Big data are big, both in scope and popularity. Large datasets require data analysts with specialized...
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Mentoring Graduate Students Part 1
I love Shakespeare. No. Wait. That’s not quite right. I really love Shakespeare. As an undergrad student, I read most of his plays and all of his sonnets. I visited the Folger Shakespeare Library. I...
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Mentoring Graduate Students, Part 2
Discovery is central to graduate education. Students explore new ideas and challenge old beliefs. They practice complex skills and interact with an array of scholars. But, from reading a professor’s...
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Social Justice and Policy Design
A few weeks ago, I read about Illinois’ new testing plan. It includes a number of points. The most notable is the state’s decision to use different standards to measure achievement among student...
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Stats, Stories, and Policy Design
In my last post, I mentioned Illinois’ new testing plan, which sets different testing standards based on student demographics including race and class. The policy oozes the flawed logic that has...
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Facebook Doesn’t Care About Ethics, So Why Should You?
The internet nearly broke when researchers published a new study, “Experimental Evidence of Massive-scale Emotional Contagion through Social Networks.” Scientists, conducting a psychological experiment...
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Friends, Lovers, and Social Media Experimentation: The Need for New Ethical...
This summer, Facebook released findings from a controversial study. I blogged about my concerns. Less than a month later, OKCupid’s co-founder publicized his own company’s unethical experiments. What...
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Ferguson, Ethics, and the Public Intellectual
During the 1890s, newspaper publishers Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst competed against each other to sell more papers. They printed sensationalist stories accompanied with fear-inducing...
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Tom Hanks Loves #FreeCommunityCollege and So Do I
Is it possible for Tom Hanks to be any more lovable? Apparently, yes. Last week, the actor who made such endearing classics as “Big,” “The ‘Burbs,” and “Turner & Hooch” published an editorial about...
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So You Want to be a Qualitative Researcher in the 21st Century
A tension exists between old and new. In The Anxiety of Influence, Harold Bloom explains the generational process among writers: Old poets inspire young poets. The apprentice learns to love form by...
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Indiana, Duke, Yik Yak, and the purpose of Education
The news has been full of lamentable examples of bigotry and discrimination. The governor of Indiana signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, legislation that permits businesses to discriminate on...
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Using Qualitative Research to Contest Stereotypes
How are black men portrayed? After Freddie Gray’s death due to the brutality of six Baltimore police officers, newscasts focused on Gray’s criminal record and suspect behavior. When city residents...
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Alice Goffman, Ethics, and Advising
A few years ago, as a graduate student at USC, I visited the American Sociological Association’s website. A name grabbed my attention. “Goffman,” I thought, “She can’t be related to the Goffman.” Alice...
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Why People Talk About Dukes of Hazard, Not The Charleston Massacre
A few weeks ago, Antar and Bill posted personal and thoughtful blogs about the Charleston Massacre and, more broadly, the repeated and targeted violence perpetrated against Black people in the United...
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Doctoral Training and Innovation for Qualitative Researchers
One of the principal tasks of a research university is to train doctoral students to be able to design and conduct quality research studies. Optimally, training includes a mixture of theory and...
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Reversing the School-to-Prison Pipeline
Participants of the Bard College Prison Initiative The realities and perils of the school-to-prison pipeline have been well documented. Scholars like Michelle Alexander and Victor Rios have illustrated...
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