Burke Johnson, Ph.D.

Education

B.S., Psychology, University of Oregon, 1980
M.A., Psychology, Radford University, 1981
M.S., Sociology, Bowling Green State University, 1983
MPA, Public Policy, University of Michigan, 1986
Ph.D., REMS Program (Research, Evaluation, Measurement, Statistics), University of Georgia, 1993

Teaching Philosophy

One of my goals as a teacher is to motivate my students to come to class prepared, and, during class, to discuss the concepts in depth until all students understand the ideas and materials and have created their own constructions/schema that hang together, are accurate, and work well. Students know when they have arrived at this “place of understanding.”It requires that students read and attempt to learn the materials on their own before class, and then deepen their understanding during class. I also cover/lecture in class about ideas that need additional coverage and new ideas that I have found useful.

When learning, students need to understand the history of the concepts and important names in relation to the concepts. Learning concepts in isolation is not enough for graduate students; they also need to understand the importance of sourcing and scholarship. To achieve usable understanding, students need to connect ideas across different courses, and I attempt to facilitate this process in my classes, reminding them what they learned in other classes or will be learning in future classes.

Another major goal I have is to help students develop an open mindedness and love for knowledge, and understand what the knowledge can bring to our society and world. It is critical to understand details, but it is perhaps more important to understand the big picture, including what makes the theories and concepts practical and useful. What are the big ideas and theories? Who are the big names? Where did the ideas come from? How can you apply the ideas in new and fruitful ways? My tests are a mixture of multiple choice (for knowledge) and essay (for synthesis and application of the knowledge). In several classes I include an application/empirical project, where students collect data, analyze the data, and write-up the results.

Research

Dr. R. Burke Johnson is a social-science/educational-research methodologist. This means that he writes about research methodology in all of its aspects. Dr. Johnson is a historian of methodology (e.g., Johnson & Gray, 2010), conducts empirical research about methodological beliefs (e.g., Sheehan & Johnson, 2012), employs new statistical approaches to research (e.g., Johnson,1995), writes about the philosophy of social science and how to construct an inclusive science (Johnson, 2009, 2016), attempts to create paradigm shifts in educational research (Johnson & Onwuegbuzie, 2004, 2016), constructed a new mixed-methods-grounded-theory research methodology (Johnson, McGowan, & Turner, 2010), explained validity in qualitative research (Johnson, 1997), created a new typology for nonexperimental quantitative research design (Johnson, 2001), a new typology of mixed methods research legitimation (Onwuegbuzie & Johnson, 2006), and a new typology of mixed methods research design (Onwuegbuzie & Johnson, 2004). He has edited special journal issues on mixed methods research (Johnson, 2006, 2012), and has written editorials to expand, creatively, mixed methods research practice (e.g., Hesse-Biber & Johnson, 2013; Johnson, 2008). Dr. Johnson writes statistics and methodology dictionaries (Vogt & Johnson, 2011), writes about sampling methods (Hibberts, Johnson, & Hudson, 2012), and writes comprehensive books on research methods (Christensen, Johnson, & Turner, 2014; Johnson & Christensen, 2014). Finally, Dr. Johnson recently co-edited (with Hesse-Biber) the Oxford Handbook of Multimethod and Mixed Methods Research Inquiry (2015).

Outreach

Dr. Johnson's outreach extends nationally and internationally. One outreach role is Executive Director of the Mixed Methods International Research Association (MMIRA). During 2014, 2015, and 2016, he gave an invited-presentation-workshop-or-keynote at the following locations: University of Oslo, Norway; University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica; Ohio State University; University of Bergen, Norway; Global School in Empirical Research Methods, Oslo, Norway; University of Vienna, Austria; Aoyama Gakuin University, Shibuya Tokyo, Japan; Ritsumeikan University, Osaki, Japan; University of Tromso, Norway; University of Hamburg, Germany; VERBI, Berlin, Germany; University of St. Gallen, Switzerland; International Eurasian Educational Research Congress, Ankara, Turkey; MMIRA Regional Conference, San Antonio, Texas; University of Education, Weingarten Germany; American Evaluation Association, Denver, CO; ICO Fall School, Blankenberge Belgium; American Association for Agricultural Education National Conference, Snowbird Resort, Utah; University of Fribourg, Switzerland; Helmut-Schmidt-Universität, Hamburg, Germany; Mixed Methods International Research Association Conference, Boston, MA; and the American Educational Research Association, Philadelphia. Dr. Johnson also was one of a small group of founding members of the Mixed Methods International Research Association (MMIRA) in 2013.

Biography

Burke Johnson is a professor in the Professional Studies Department at the University of South Alabama. His PhD is from the REMS (research, evaluation, measurement, and statistics) program in the College of Education at the University of Georgia. He also has graduate degrees in psychology, sociology, and public administration, which have provided him with a multidisciplinary perspective on research methodology. He was guest editor for a special issue of Research in the Schools focusing on mixed research and completed a similar guest editorship for the American Behavioral Scientist. He was an associate editor of the Journal of Mixed Methods Research in its early years. Burke is first author of Educational Research: Quantitative, Qualitative, and Mixed Approaches (Sage, 2014, 5th edition); second author of Research Methods, Design, and Analysis (Pearson, 2014, 12th edition); second author of The SAGE Dictionary of Statistics and Methodology (2015); coeditor (with Sharlene Hesse-Biber) of The Oxford Handbook of Multimethod and Mixed Methods Research Inquiry (2015); coeditor (with Paul Vogt) of Correlation and Regression Analysis (2012); and associate editor of The SAGE Glossary of the Social and Behavioral Sciences (2009).

Courses

IDE 510 - Educational Research Methods
IDE 620 - Quantitative Methods I
IDE 621 - Quantitative Methods II
IDE 630 - Quantitative Methods III
IDE 631 - Introduction to Qualitative and Mixed Methods Research
IDE 660 - Program Evaluation
IDE 645 - Advanced Human Performance Improvement (HPI)
IDE 692 - Research Methods Seminar
IDE 710 - Research Seminar (for 1st year doctoral students)
ISD 623 - Advanced Research Methodology