ABSTRACT
Let me begin by applauding the editors of this volume. By inviting the authors to discuss the problems they have encountered in conducting classroom research, the editors were foregrounding the often overlooked real-life decisions and “compromises” intrinsic to all research projects, even those in the laboratory. In sanitized academic discourse, however, they often go unmentioned. Let me also acknowledge from the outset the contributions of the authors, their sensitivity, and some might even say, their courage in admitting that they had problems at all. I would conjecture that a lot of problems of the sort that have been inventoried for us in this volume have gone unreported in other studies, not out of any willful malfeasance, but because we have been so conditioned to preserve methodological purism, however unrealistic a goal that may have been. By being granted access to the decisions made in planning and executing research projects by these authors, we can appreciate how inexact and organic an endeavor the research enterprise is.
