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What are the benefits of educational research for teachers?

Cultivating a research-based approach to developing your practice provides evidence to effect change in your teaching, your classroom, your school, and beyond. Rebecca Austin, author of Researching Primary Education  and Senior Lecturer at the School of Teacher Education and Development at Canterbury Christchurch University, highlights what the benefits are of research to your practice…

In the context of the debate about what works and why, there is a wide range of benefits to researching your own practice, whether directly feeding into improvement through action research or, more broadly, gaining understanding and knowledge on themes of interest and relevance. This is why research is embedded into initial teacher education. As research becomes embedded in your practice you can gain a range of benefits. Research can:

• clarify purposes, processes and priorities when introducing change – for example, to  curriculum, pedagogy or assessment  
• develop your agency, influence, self-efficacy and voice within your own school and  more widely within the profession.

Each of these can involve investigation using evidence from your own setting, along with wider research evidence. 

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Using Research and Reason in Education: How Teachers Can Use Scientifically Based Research to Make Curricular & Instructional Decisions

Paula J. Stanovich and Keith E. Stanovich University of Toronto

Produced by RMC Research Corporation, Portsmouth, New Hampshire

This publication was produced under National Institute for Literacy Contract No. ED-00CO-0093 with RMC Research Corporation. Sandra Baxter served as the contracting officer's technical representative. The views expressed herein do not necessarily represent the policies of the National Institute for Literacy. No official endorsement by the National Institute for Literacy or any product, commodity, service, or enterprise is intended or should be inferred.

The National Institute for Literacy

Sandra Baxter, Interim Executive Director Lynn Reddy, Communications Director

To order copies of this booklet, contact the National Institute for Literacy at EdPubs, PO Box 1398, Jessup, MD 20794-1398. Call 800-228-8813 or email [email protected] .

The National Institute for Literacy, an independent federal organization, supports the development of high quality state, regional, and national literacy services so that all Americans can develop the literacy skills they need to succeed at work, at home, and in the community.

The Partnership for Reading, a project administered by the National Institute for Literacy, is a collaborative effort of the National Institute for Literacy, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the U.S. Department of Education, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to make evidence-based reading research available to educators, parents, policy makers, and others with an interest in helping all people learn to read well.

Editorial support provided by C. Ralph Adler and Elizabeth Goldman, and design/production support provided by Diane Draper and Bob Kozman, all of RMC Research Corporation.

Introduction

In the recent move toward standards-based reform in public education, many educational reform efforts require schools to demonstrate that they are achieving educational outcomes with students performing at a required level of achievement. Federal and state legislation, in particular, has codified this standards-based movement and tied funding and other incentives to student achievement.

At first, demonstrating student learning may seem like a simple task, but reflection reveals that it is a complex challenge requiring educators to use specific knowledge and skills. Standards-based reform has many curricular and instructional prerequisites. The curriculum must represent the most important knowledge, skills, and attributes that schools want their students to acquire because these learning outcomes will serve as the basis of assessment instruments. Likewise, instructional methods should be appropriate for the designed curriculum. Teaching methods should lead to students learning the outcomes that are the focus of the assessment standards.

Standards- and assessment-based educational reforms seek to obligate schools and teachers to supply evidence that their instructional methods are effective. But testing is only one of three ways to gather evidence about the effectiveness of instructional methods. Evidence of instructional effectiveness can come from any of the following sources:

• Demonstrated student achievement in formal testing situations implemented by the teacher, school district, or state;
• Published findings of research-based evidence that the instructional methods being used by teachers lead to student achievement; or
• Proof of reason-based practice that converges with a research-based consensus in the scientific literature. This type of justification of educational practice becomes important when direct evidence may be lacking (a direct test of the instructional efficacy of a particular method is absent), but there is a theoretical link to research-based evidence that can be traced.

Each of these methods has its pluses and minuses. While testing seems the most straightforward, it is not necessarily the clear indicator of good educational practice that the public seems to think it is. The meaning of test results is often not immediately clear. For example, comparing averages or other indicators of overall performance from tests across classrooms, schools, or school districts takes no account of the resources and support provided to a school, school district, or individual professional. Poor outcomes do not necessarily indict the efforts of physicians in Third World countries who work with substandard equipment and supplies. Likewise, objective evidence of below-grade or below-standard mean performance of a group of students should not necessarily indict their teachers if essential resources and supports (e.g., curriculum materials, institutional aid, parental cooperation) to support teaching efforts were lacking. However, the extent to which children could learn effectively even in under-equipped schools is not known because evidence-based practices are, by and large, not implemented. That is, there is evidence that children experiencing academic difficulties can achieve more educationally if they are taught with effective methods; sadly, scientific research about what works does not usually find its way into most classrooms.

Testing provides a useful professional calibrator, but it requires great contextual sensitivity in interpretation. It is not the entire solution for assessing the quality of instructional efforts. This is why research-based and reason-based educational practice are also crucial for determining the quality and impact of programs. Teachers thus have the responsibility to be effective users and interpreters of research. Providing a survey and synthesis of the most effective practices for a variety of key curriculum goals (such as literacy and numeracy) would seem to be a helpful idea, but no document could provide all of that information. (Many excellent research syntheses exist, such as the National Reading Panel, 2000; Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998; Swanson, 1999, but the knowledge base about effective educational practices is constantly being updated, and many issues remain to be settled.)

As professionals, teachers can become more effective and powerful by developing the skills to recognize scientifically based practice and, when the evidence is not available, use some basic research concepts to draw conclusions on their own. This paper offers a primer for those skills that will allow teachers to become independent evaluators of educational research.

The Formal Scientific Method and Scientific Thinking in Educational Practice

When you go to your family physician with a medical complaint, you expect that the recommended treatment has proven to be effective with many other patients who have had the same symptoms. You may even ask why a particular medication is being recommended for you. The doctor may summarize the background knowledge that led to that recommendation and very likely will cite summary evidence from the drug's many clinical trials and perhaps even give you an overview of the theory behind the drug's success in treating symptoms like yours.

All of this discussion will probably occur in rather simple terms, but that does not obscure the fact that the doctor has provided you with data to support a theory about your complaint and its treatment. The doctor has shared knowledge of medical science with you. And while everyone would agree that the practice of medicine has its "artful" components (for example, the creation of a healing relationship between doctor and patient), we have come to expect and depend upon the scientific foundation that underpins even the artful aspects of medical treatment. Even when we do not ask our doctors specifically for the data, we assume it is there, supporting our course of treatment.

Actually, Vaughn and Dammann (2001) have argued that the correct analogy is to say that teaching is in part a craft, rather than an art. They point out that craft knowledge is superior to alternative forms of knowledge such as superstition and folklore because, among other things, craft knowledge is compatible with scientific knowledge and can be more easily integrated with it. One could argue that in this age of education reform and accountability, educators are being asked to demonstrate that their craft has been integrated with science--that their instructional models, methods, and materials can be likened to the evidence a physician should be able to produce showing that a specific treatment will be effective. As with medicine, constructing teaching practice on a firm scientific foundation does not mean denying the craft aspects of teaching.

Architecture is another professional practice that, like medicine and education, grew from being purely a craft to a craft based firmly on a scientific foundation. Architects wish to design beautiful buildings and environments, but they must also apply many foundational principles of engineering and adhere to structural principles. If they do not, their buildings, however beautiful they may be, will not stand. Similarly, a teacher seeks to design lessons that stimulate students and entice them to learn--lessons that are sometimes a beauty to behold. But if the lessons are not based in the science of pedagogy, they, like poorly constructed buildings, will fail.

Education is informed by formal scientific research through the use of archival research-based knowledge such as that found in peer-reviewed educational journals. Preservice teachers are first exposed to the formal scientific research in their university teacher preparation courses (it is hoped), through the instruction received from their professors, and in their course readings (e.g., textbooks, journal articles). Practicing teachers continue their exposure to the results of formal scientific research by subscribing to and reading professional journals, by enrolling in graduate programs, and by becoming lifelong learners.

Scientific thinking in practice is what characterizes reflective teachers--those who inquire into their own practice and who examine their own classrooms to find out what works best for them and their students. What follows in this document is, first, a "short course" on how to become an effective consumer of the archival literature that results from the conduct of formal scientific research in education and, second, a section describing how teachers can think scientifically in their ongoing reflection about their classroom practice.

Being able to access mechanisms that evaluate claims about teaching methods and to recognize scientific research and its findings is especially important for teachers because they are often confronted with the view that "anything goes" in the field of education--that there is no such thing as best practice in education, that there are no ways to verify what works best, that teachers should base their practice on intuition, or that the latest fad must be the best way to teach, please a principal, or address local school reform. The "anything goes" mentality actually represents a threat to teachers' professional autonomy. It provides a fertile environment for gurus to sell untested educational "remedies" that are not supported by an established research base.

Teachers as independent evaluators of research evidence

One factor that has impeded teachers from being active and effective consumers of educational science has been a lack of orientation and training in how to understand the scientific process and how that process results in the cumulative growth of knowledge that leads to validated educational practice. Educators have only recently attempted to resolve educational disputes scientifically, and teachers have not yet been armed with the skills to evaluate disputes on their own.

Educational practice has suffered greatly because its dominant model for resolving or adjudicating disputes has been more political (with its corresponding factions and interest groups) than scientific. The field's failure to ground practice in the attitudes and values of science has made educators susceptible to the "authority syndrome" as well as fads and gimmicks that ignore evidence-based practice.

When our ancestors needed information about how to act, they would ask their elders and other wise people. Contemporary society and culture are much more complex. Mass communication allows virtually anyone (on the Internet, through self-help books) to proffer advice, to appear to be a "wise elder." The current problem is how to sift through the avalanche of misguided and uninformed advice to find genuine knowledge. Our problem is not information; we have tons of information. What we need are quality control mechanisms.

Peer-reviewed research journals in various disciplines provide those mechanisms. However, even with mechanisms like these in behavioral science and education, it is all too easy to do an "end run" around the quality control they provide. Powerful information dissemination outlets such as publishing houses and mass media frequently do not discriminate between good and bad information. This provides a fertile environment for gurus to sell untested educational "remedies" that are not supported by an established research base and, often, to discredit science, scientific evidence, and the notion of research-based best practice in education. As Gersten (2001) notes, both seasoned and novice teachers are "deluged with misinformation" (p. 45).

We need tools for evaluating the credibility of these many and varied sources of information; the ability to recognize research-based conclusions is especially important. Acquiring those tools means understanding scientific values and learning methods for making inferences from the research evidence that arises through the scientific process. These values and methods were recently summarized by a panel of the National Academy of Sciences convened on scientific inquiry in education (Shavelson & Towne, 2002), and our discussion here will be completely consistent with the conclusions of that NAS panel.

The scientific criteria for evaluating knowledge claims are not complicated and could easily be included in initial teacher preparation programs, but they usually are not (which deprives teachers from an opportunity to become more efficient and autonomous in their work right at the beginning of their careers). These criteria include:

• the publication of findings in refereed journals (scientific publications that employ a process of peer review),
• the duplication of the results by other investigators, and
• a consensus within a particular research community on whether there is a critical mass of studies that point toward a particular conclusion.

In their discussion of the evolution of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) conference and the importance of separating research evidence from opinion when making decisions about instructional practice, Levin and O'Donnell (2000) highlight the importance of enabling teachers to become independent evaluators of research evidence. Being aware of the importance of research published in peer-reviewed scientific journals is only the first step because this represents only the most minimal of criteria. Following is a review of some of the principles of research-based evaluation that teachers will find useful in their work.

Publicly verifiable research conclusions: Replication and Peer Review

Source credibility: the consumer protection of peer reviewed journals..

The front line of defense for teachers against incorrect information in education is the existence of peer-reviewed journals in education, psychology, and other related social sciences. These journals publish empirical research on topics relevant to classroom practice and human cognition and learning. They are the first place that teachers should look for evidence of validated instructional practices.

As a general quality control mechanism, peer review journals provide a "first pass" filter that teachers can use to evaluate the plausibility of educational claims. To put it more concretely, one ironclad criterion that will always work for teachers when presented with claims of uncertain validity is the question: Have findings supporting this method been published in recognized scientific journals that use some type of peer review procedure? The answer to this question will almost always separate pseudoscientific claims from the real thing.

In a peer review, authors submit a paper to a journal for publication, where it is critiqued by several scientists. The critiques are reviewed by an editor (usually a scientist with an extensive history of work in the specialty area covered by the journal). The editor then decides whether the weight of opinion warrants immediate publication, publication after further experimentation and statistical analysis, or rejection because the research is flawed or does not add to the knowledge base. Most journals carry a statement of editorial policy outlining their exact procedures for publication, so it is easy to check whether a journal is in fact, peer-reviewed.

Peer review is a minimal criterion, not a stringent one. Not all information in peer-reviewed scientific journals is necessarily correct, but it has at the very least undergone a cycle of peer criticism and scrutiny. However, it is because the presence of peer-reviewed research is such a minimal criterion that its absence becomes so diagnostic. The failure of an idea, a theory, an educational practice, behavioral therapy, or a remediation technique to have adequate documentation in the peer-reviewed literature of a scientific discipline is a very strong indication to be wary of the practice.

The mechanisms of peer review vary somewhat from discipline to discipline, but the underlying rationale is the same. Peer review is one way (replication of a research finding is another) that science institutionalizes the attitudes of objectivity and public criticism. Ideas and experimentation undergo a honing process in which they are submitted to other critical minds for evaluation. Ideas that survive this critical process have begun to meet the criterion of public verifiability. The peer review process is far from perfect, but it really is the only external consumer protection that teachers have.

The history of reading instruction illustrates the high cost that is paid when the peer-reviewed literature is ignored, when the normal processes of scientific adjudication are replaced with political debates and rhetorical posturing. A vast literature has been generated on best practices that foster children's reading acquisition (Adams, 1990; Anderson, Hiebert, Scott, & Wilkinson, 1985; Chard & Osborn, 1999; Cunningham & Allington, 1994; Ehri, Nunes, Stahl, & Willows, 2001; Moats, 1999; National Reading Panel, 2000; Pearson, 1993; Pressley, 1998; Pressley, Rankin, & Yokol, 1996; Rayner, Foorman, Perfetti, Pesetsky, & Seidenberg, 2002; Reading Coherence Initiative, 1999; Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998; Spear-Swerling & Sternberg, 2001). Yet much of this literature remains unknown to many teachers, contributing to the frustrating lack of clarity about accepted, scientifically validated findings and conclusions on reading acquisition.

Teachers should also be forewarned about the difference between professional education journals that are magazines of opinion in contrast to journals where primary reports of research, or reviews of research, are peer reviewed. For example, the magazines Phi Delta Kappan and Educational Leadership both contain stimulating discussions of educational issues, but neither is a peer-reviewed journal of original research. In contrast, the American Educational Research Journal (a flagship journal of the AERA) and the Journal of Educational Psychology (a flagship journal of the American Psychological Association) are both peer-reviewed journals of original research. Both are main sources for evidence on validated techniques of reading instruction and for research on aspects of the reading process that are relevant to a teacher's instructional decisions.

This is true, too, of presentations at conferences of educational organizations. Some are data-based presentations of original research. Others are speeches reflecting personal opinion about educational problems. While these talks can be stimulating and informative, they are not a substitute for empirical research on educational effectiveness.

Replication and the importance of public verifiability.

Research-based conclusions about educational practice are public in an important sense: they do not exist solely in the mind of a particular individual but have been submitted to the scientific community for criticism and empirical testing by others. Knowledge considered "special"--the province of the thought of an individual and immune from scrutiny and criticism by others--can never have the status of scientific knowledge. Research-based conclusions, when published in a peer reviewed journal, become part of the public realm, available to all, in a way that claims of "special expertise" are not.

Replication is the second way that science uses to make research-based conclusions concrete and "public." In order to be considered scientific, a research finding must be presented to other researchers in the scientific community in a way that enables them to attempt the same experiment and obtain the same results. When the same results occur, the finding has been replicated . This process ensures that a finding is not the result of the errors or biases of a particular investigator. Replicable findings become part of the converging evidence that forms the basis of a research-based conclusion about educational practice.

John Donne told us that "no man is an island." Similarly, in science, no researcher is an island. Each investigator is connected to the research community and its knowledge base. This interconnection enables science to grow cumulatively and for research-based educational practice to be built on a convergence of knowledge from a variety of sources. Researchers constantly build on previous knowledge in order to go beyond what is currently known. This process is possible only if research findings are presented in such a way that any investigator can use them to build on.

Philosopher Daniel Dennett (1995) has said that science is "making mistakes in public. Making mistakes for all to see, in the hopes of getting the others to help with the corrections" (p. 380). We might ask those proposing an educational innovation for the evidence that they have in fact "made some mistakes in public." Legitimate scientific disciplines can easily provide such evidence. For example, scientists studying the psychology of reading once thought that reading difficulties were caused by faulty eye movements. This hypothesis has been shown to be in error, as has another that followed it, that so-called visual reversal errors were a major cause of reading difficulty. Both hypotheses were found not to square with the empirical evidence (Rayner, 1998; Share & Stanovich, 1995). The hypothesis that reading difficulties can be related to language difficulties at the phonological level has received much more support (Liberman, 1999; National Reading Panel, 2000; Rayner, Foorman, Perfetti, Pesetsky, & Seidenberg, 2002; Shankweiler, 1999; Stanovich, 2000).

After making a few such "errors" in public, reading scientists have begun, in the last 20 years, to get it right. But the only reason teachers can have confidence that researchers are now "getting it right" is that researchers made it open, public knowledge when they got things wrong. Proponents of untested and pseudoscientific educational practices will never point to cases where they "got it wrong" because they are not committed to public knowledge in the way that actual science is. These proponents do not need, as Dennett says, "to get others to help in making the corrections" because they have no intention of correcting their beliefs and prescriptions based on empirical evidence.

Education is so susceptible to fads and unproven practices because of its tacit endorsement of a personalistic view of knowledge acquisition--one that is antithetical to the scientific value of the public verifiability of knowledge claims. Many educators believe that knowledge resides within particular individuals--with particularly elite insights--who then must be called upon to dispense this knowledge to others. Indeed, some educators reject public, depersonalized knowledge in social science because they believe it dehumanizes people. Science, however, with its conception of publicly verifiable knowledge, actually democratizes knowledge. It frees practitioners and researchers from slavish dependence on authority.

Subjective, personalized views of knowledge degrade the human intellect by creating conditions that subjugate it to an elite whose "personal" knowledge is not accessible to all (Bronowski, 1956, 1977; Dawkins, 1998; Gross, Levitt, & Lewis, 1997; Medawar, 1982, 1984, 1990; Popper, 1972; Wilson, 1998). Empirical science, by generating knowledge and moving it into the public domain, is a liberating force. Teachers can consult the research and decide for themselves whether the state of the literature is as the expert portrays it. All teachers can benefit from some rudimentary grounding in the most fundamental principles of scientific inference. With knowledge of a few uncomplicated research principles, such as control, manipulation, and randomization, anyone can enter the open, public discourse about empirical findings. In fact, with the exception of a few select areas such as the eye movement research mentioned previously, much of the work described in noted summaries of reading research (e.g., Adams, 1990; Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998) could easily be replicated by teachers themselves.

There are many ways that the criteria of replication and peer review can be utilized in education to base practitioner training on research-based best practice. Take continuing teacher education in the form of inservice sessions, for example. Teachers and principals who select speakers for professional development activities should ask speakers for the sources of their conclusions in the form of research evidence in peer-reviewed journals. They should ask speakers for bibliographies of the research evidence published on the practices recommended in their presentations.

The science behind research-based practice relies on systematic empiricism

Empiricism is the practice of relying on observation. Scientists find out about the world by examining it. The refusal by some scientists to look into Galileo's telescope is an example of how empiricism has been ignored at certain points in history. It was long believed that knowledge was best obtained through pure thought or by appealing to authority. Galileo claimed to have seen moons around the planet Jupiter. Another scholar, Francesco Sizi, attempted to refute Galileo, not with observations, but with the following argument:

There are seven windows in the head, two nostrils, two ears, two eyes and a mouth; so in the heavens there are two favorable stars, two unpropitious, two luminaries, and Mercury alone undecided and indifferent. From which and many other similar phenomena of nature such as the seven metals, etc., which it were tedious to enumerate, we gather that the number of planets is necessarily seven...ancient nations, as well as modern Europeans, have adopted the division of the week into seven days, and have named them from the seven planets; now if we increase the number of planets, this whole system falls to the ground...moreover, the satellites are invisible to the naked eye and therefore can have no influence on the earth and therefore would be useless and therefore do not exist. (Holton & Roller, 1958, p. 160)

Three centuries of the demonstrated power of the empirical approach give us an edge on poor Sizi. Take away those years of empiricism, and many of us might have been there nodding our heads and urging him on. In fact, the empirical approach is not necessarily obvious, which is why we often have to teach it, even in a society that is dominated by science.

Empiricism pure and simple is not enough, however. Observation itself is fine and necessary, but pure, unstructured observation of the natural world will not lead to scientific knowledge. Write down every observation you make from the time you get up in the morning to the time you go to bed on a given day. When you finish, you will have a great number of facts, but you will not have a greater understanding of the world. Scientific observation is termed systematic because it is structured so that the results of the observation reveal something about the underlying causal structure of events in the world. Observations are structured so that, depending upon the outcome of the observation, some theories of the causes of the outcome are supported and others rejected.

Teachers can benefit by understanding two things about research and causal inferences. The first is the simple (but sometimes obscured) fact that statements about best instructional practices are statements that contain a causal claim. These statements claim that one type of method or practice causes superior educational outcomes. Second, teachers must understand how the logic of the experimental method provides the critical support for making causal inferences.

Science addresses testable questions

Science advances by positing theories to account for particular phenomena in the world, by deriving predictions from these theories, by testing the predictions empirically, and by modifying the theories based on the tests (the sequence is typically theory -> prediction -> test -> theory modification). What makes a theory testable? A theory must have specific implications for observable events in the natural world.

Science deals only with a certain class of problem: the kind that is empirically solvable. That does not mean that different classes of problems are inherently solvable or unsolvable and that this division is fixed forever. Quite the contrary: some problems that are currently unsolvable may become solvable as theory and empirical techniques become more sophisticated. For example, decades ago historians would not have believed that the controversial issue of whether Thomas Jefferson had a child with his slave Sally Hemings was an empirically solvable question. Yet, by 1998, this problem had become solvable through advances in genetic technology, and a paper was published in the journal Nature (Foster, Jobling, Taylor, Donnelly, Deknijeff, Renemieremet, Zerjal, & Tyler-Smith, 1998) on the question.

The criterion of whether a problem is "testable" is called the falsifiability criterion: a scientific theory must always be stated in such a way that the predictions derived from it can potentially be shown to be false. The falsifiability criterion states that, for a theory to be useful, the predictions drawn from it must be specific. The theory must go out on a limb, so to speak, because in telling us what should happen, the theory must also imply that certain things will not happen. If these latter things do happen, it is a clear signal that something is wrong with the theory. It may need to be modified, or we may need to look for an entirely new theory. Either way, we will end up with a theory that is closer to the truth.

In contrast, if a theory does not rule out any possible observations, then the theory can never be changed, and we are frozen into our current way of thinking with no possibility of progress. A successful theory cannot posit or account for every possible happening. Such a theory robs itself of any predictive power.

What we are talking about here is a certain type of intellectual honesty. In science, the proponent of a theory is always asked to address this question before the data are collected: "What data pattern would cause you to give up, or at least to alter, this theory?" In the same way, the falsifiability criterion is a useful consumer protection for the teacher when evaluating claims of educational effectiveness. Proponents of an educational practice should be asked for evidence; they should also be willing to admit that contrary data will lead them to abandon the practice. True scientific knowledge is held tentatively and is subject to change based on contrary evidence. Educational remedies not based on scientific evidence will often fail to put themselves at risk by specifying what data patterns would prove them false.

Objectivity and intellectual honesty

Objectivity, another form of intellectual honesty in research, means that we let nature "speak for itself" without imposing our wishes on it--that we report the results of experimentation as accurately as we can and that we interpret them as fairly as possible. (The fact that this goal is unattainable for any single human being should not dissuade us from holding objectivity as a value.)

In the language of the general public, open-mindedness means being open to possible theories and explanations for a particular phenomenon. But in science it means that and something more. Philosopher Jonathan Adler (1998) teaches us that science values another aspect of open-mindedness even more highly: "What truly marks an open-minded person is the willingness to follow where evidence leads. The open-minded person is willing to defer to impartial investigations rather than to his own predilections...Scientific method is attunement to the world, not to ourselves" (p. 44).

Objectivity is critical to the process of science, but it does not mean that such attitudes must characterize each and every scientist for science as a whole to work. Jacob Bronowski (1973, 1977) often argued that the unique power of science to reveal knowledge about the world does not arise because scientists are uniquely virtuous (that they are completely objective or that they are never biased in interpreting findings, for example). It arises because fallible scientists are immersed in a process of checks and balances --a process in which scientists are always there to criticize and to root out errors. Philosopher Daniel Dennett (1999/2000) points out that "scientists take themselves to be just as weak and fallible as anybody else, but recognizing those very sources of error in themselvesÉthey have devised elaborate systems to tie their own hands, forcibly preventing their frailties and prejudices from infecting their results" (p. 42). More humorously, psychologist Ray Nickerson (1998) makes the related point that the vanities of scientists are actually put to use by the scientific process, by noting that it is "not so much the critical attitude that individual scientists have taken with respect to their own ideas that has given science its success...but more the fact that individual scientists have been highly motivated to demonstrate that hypotheses that are held by some other scientists are false" (p. 32). These authors suggest that the strength of scientific knowledge comes not because scientists are virtuous, but from the social process where scientists constantly cross-check each others' knowledge and conclusions.

The public criteria of peer review and replication of findings exist in part to keep checks on the objectivity of individual scientists. Individuals cannot hide bias and nonobjectivity by personalizing their claims and keeping them from public scrutiny. Science does not accept findings that have failed the tests of replication and peer review precisely because it wants to ensure that all findings in science are in the public domain, as defined above. Purveyors of pseudoscientific educational practices fail the test of objectivity and are often identifiable by their attempts to do an "end run" around the public mechanisms of science by avoiding established peer review mechanisms and the information-sharing mechanisms that make replication possible. Instead, they attempt to promulgate their findings directly to consumers, such as teachers.

The principle of converging evidence

The principle of converging evidence has been well illustrated in the controversies surrounding the teaching of reading. The methods of systematic empiricism employed in the study of reading acquisition are many and varied. They include case studies, correlational studies, experimental studies, narratives, quasi-experimental studies, surveys, epidemiological studies and many others. The results of many of these studies have been synthesized in several important research syntheses (Adams, 1990; Ehri et al., 2001; National Reading Panel, 2000; Pressley, 1998; Rayner et al., 2002; Reading Coherence Initiative, 1999; Share & Stanovich, 1995; Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998; Snowling, 2000; Spear-Swerling & Sternberg, 2001; Stanovich, 2000). These studies were used in a process of establishing converging evidence, a principle that governs the drawing of the conclusion that a particular educational practice is research-based.

The principle of converging evidence is applied in situations requiring a judgment about where the "preponderance of evidence" points. Most areas of science contain competing theories. The extent to which a particular study can be seen as uniquely supporting one particular theory depends on whether other competing explanations have been ruled out. A particular experimental result is never equally relevant to all competing theories. An experiment may be a very strong test of one or two alternative theories but a weak test of others. Thus, research is considered highly convergent when a series of experiments consistently supports a given theory while collectively eliminating the most important competing explanations. Although no single experiment can rule out all alternative explanations, taken collectively, a series of partially diagnostic experiments can lead to a strong conclusion if the data converge.

Contrast this idea of converging evidence with the mistaken view that a problem in science can be solved with a single, crucial experiment, or that a single critical insight can advance theory and overturn all previous knowledge. This view of scientific progress fits nicely with the operation of the news media, in which history is tracked by presenting separate, disconnected "events" in bite-sized units. This is a gross misunderstanding of scientific progress and, if taken too seriously, leads to misconceptions about how conclusions are reached about research-based practices.

One experiment rarely decides an issue, supporting one theory and ruling out all others. Issues are most often decided when the community of scientists gradually begins to agree that the preponderance of evidence supports one alternative theory rather than another. Scientists do not evaluate data from a single experiment that has finally been designed in the perfect way. They most often evaluate data from dozens of experiments, each containing some flaws but providing part of the answer.

Although there are many ways in which an experiment can go wrong (or become confounded ), a scientist with experience working on a particular problem usually has a good idea of what most of the critical factors are, and there are usually only a few. The idea of converging evidence tells us to examine the pattern of flaws running through the research literature because the nature of this pattern can either support or undermine the conclusions that we might draw.

For example, suppose that the findings from a number of different experiments were largely consistent in supporting a particular conclusion. Given the imperfect nature of experiments, we would evaluate the extent and nature of the flaws in these studies. If all the experiments were flawed in a similar way, this circumstance would undermine confidence in the conclusions drawn from them because the consistency of the outcome may simply have resulted from a particular, consistent flaw. On the other hand, if all the experiments were flawed in different ways, our confidence in the conclusions increases because it is less likely that the consistency in the results was due to a contaminating factor that confounded all the experiments. As Anderson and Anderson (1996) note, "When a conceptual hypothesis survives many potential falsifications based on different sets of assumptions, we have a robust effect." (p. 742).

Suppose that five different theoretical summaries (call them A, B, C, D, and E) of a given set of phenomena exist at one time and are investigated in a series of experiments. Suppose that one set of experiments represents a strong test of theories A, B, and C, and that the data largely refute theories A and B and support C. Imagine also that another set of experiments is a particularly strong test of theories C, D, and E, and that the data largely refute theories D and E and support C. In such a situation, we would have strong converging evidence for theory C. Not only do we have data supportive of theory C, but we have data that contradict its major competitors. Note that no one experiment tests all the theories, but taken together, the entire set of experiments allows a strong inference.

In contrast, if the two sets of experiments each represent strong tests of B, C, and E, and the data strongly support C and refute B and E, the overall support for theory C would be less strong than in our previous example. The reason is that, although data supporting theory C have been generated, there is no strong evidence ruling out two viable alternative theories (A and D). Thus research is highly convergent when a series of experiments consistently supports a given theory while collectively eliminating the most important competing explanations. Although no single experiment can rule out all alternative explanations, taken collectively, a series of partially diagnostic experiments can lead to a strong conclusion if the data converge in the manner of our first example.

Increasingly, the combining of evidence from disparate studies to form a conclusion is being done more formally by the use of the statistical technique termed meta-analysis (Cooper & Hedges, 1994; Hedges & Olkin, 1985; Hunter & Schmidt, 1990; Rosenthal, 1995; Schmidt, 1992; Swanson, 1999) which has been used extensively to establish whether various medical practices are research based. In a medical context, meta-analysis:

involves adding together the data from many clinical trials to create a single pool of data big enough to eliminate much of the statistical uncertainty that plagues individual trials...The great virtue of meta-analysis is that clear findings can emerge from a group of studies whose findings are scattered all over the map. (Plotkin,1996, p. 70)

The use of meta-analysis for determining the research validation of educational practices is just the same as in medicine. The effects obtained when one practice is compared against another are expressed in a common statistical metric that allows comparison of effects across studies. The findings are then statistically amalgamated in some standard ways (Cooper & Hedges, 1994; Hedges & Olkin, 1985; Swanson, 1999) and a conclusion about differential efficacy is reached if the amalgamation process passes certain statistical criteria. In some cases, of course, no conclusion can be drawn with confidence, and the result of the meta-analysis is inconclusive.

More and more commentators on the educational research literature are calling for a greater emphasis on meta-analysis as a way of dampening the contentious disputes about conflicting studies that plague education and other behavioral sciences (Kavale & Forness, 1995; Rosnow & Rosenthal, 1989; Schmidt, 1996; Stanovich, 2001; Swanson, 1999). The method is useful for ending disputes that seem to be nothing more than a "he-said, she-said" debate. An emphasis on meta-analysis has often revealed that we actually have more stable and useful findings than is apparent from a perusal of the conflicts in our journals.

The National Reading Panel (2000) found just this in their meta-analysis of the evidence surrounding several issues in reading education. For example, they concluded that the results of a meta-analysis of the results of 66 comparisons from 38 different studies indicated "solid support for the conclusion that systematic phonics instruction makes a bigger contribution to children's growth in reading than alternative programs providing unsystematic or no phonics instruction" (p. 2-84). In another section of their report, the National Reading Panel reported that a meta-analysis of 52 studies of phonemic awareness training indicated that "teaching children to manipulate the sounds in language helps them learn to read. Across the various conditions of teaching, testing, and participant characteristics, the effect sizes were all significantly greater than chance and ranged from large to small, with the majority in the moderate range. Effects of phonemic awareness training on reading lasted well beyond the end of training" (p. 2-5).

A statement by a task force of the American Psychological Association (Wilkinson, 1999) on statistical methods in psychology journals provides an apt summary for this section. The task force stated that investigators should not "interpret a single study's results as having importance independent of the effects reported elsewhere in the relevant literature" (p. 602). Science progresses by convergence upon conclusions. The outcomes of one study can only be interpreted in the context of the present state of the convergence on the particular issue in question.

The logic of the experimental method

Scientific thinking is based on the ideas of comparison, control, and manipulation . In a true experimental study, these characteristics of scientific investigation must be arranged to work in concert.

Comparison alone is not enough to justify a causal inference. In methodology texts, correlational investigations (which involve comparison only) are distinguished from true experimental investigations that warrant much stronger causal inferences because they involve comparison, control, and manipulation. The mere existence of a relationship between two variables does not guarantee that changes in one are causing changes in the other. Correlation does not imply causation.

There are two potential problems with drawing causal inferences from correlational evidence. The first is called the third-variable problem. It occurs when the correlation between the two variables does not indicate a direct causal path between them but arises because both variables are related to a third variable that has not even been measured.

The second reason is called the directionality problem. It creates potential interpretive difficulties because even if two variables have a direct causal relationship, the direction of that relationship is not indicated by the mere presence of the correlation. In short, a correlation between variables A and B could arise because changes in A are causing changes in B or because changes in B are causing changes in A. The mere presence of the correlation does not allow us to decide between these two possibilities.

The heart of the experimental method lies in manipulation and control. In contrast to a correlational study, where the investigator simply observes whether the natural fluctuation in two variables displays a relationship, the investigator in a true experiment manipulates the variable thought to be the cause (the independent variable) and looks for an effect on the variable thought to be the effect (the dependent variable ) while holding all other variables constant by control and randomization. This method removes the third-variable problem because, in the natural world, many different things are related. The experimental method may be viewed as a way of prying apart these naturally occurring relationships. It does so because it isolates one particular variable (the hypothesized cause) by manipulating it and holding everything else constant (control).

When manipulation is combined with a procedure known as random assignment (in which the subjects themselves do not determine which experimental condition they will be in but, instead, are randomly assigned to one of the experimental groups), scientists can rule out alternative explanations of data patterns. By using manipulation, experimental control, and random assignment, investigators construct stronger comparisons so that the outcome eliminates alternative theories and explanations.

The need for both correlational methods and true experiments

As strong as they are methodologically, studies employing true experimental logic are not the only type that can be used to draw conclusions. Correlational studies have value. The results from many different types of investigation, including correlational studies, can be amalgamated to derive a general conclusion. The basis for conclusion rests on the convergence observed from the variety of methods used. This is most certainly true in classroom and curriculum research. It is necessary to amalgamate the results from not only experimental investigations, but correlational studies, nonequivalent control group studies, time series designs, and various other quasi-experimental designs and multivariate correlational designs, All have their strengths and weaknesses. For example, it is often (but not always) the case that experimental investigations are high in internal validity, but limited in external validity, whereas correlational studies are often high in external validity, but low in internal validity.

Internal validity concerns whether we can infer a causal effect for a particular variable. The more a study employs the logic of a true experiment (i.e., includes manipulation, control, and randomization), the more we can make a strong causal inference. External validity concerns the generalizability of the conclusion to the population and setting of interest. Internal and external validity are often traded off across different methodologies. Experimental laboratory investigations are high in internal validity but may not fully address concerns about external validity. Field classroom investigations, on the other hand, are often quite high in external validity but because of the logistical difficulties involved in carrying them out, they are often quite low in internal validity. That is why we need to look for a convergence of results, not just consistency from one method. Convergence increases our confidence in the external and internal validity of our conclusions.

Again, this underscores why correlational studies can contribute to knowledge. First, some variables simply cannot be manipulated for ethical reasons (for instance, human malnutrition or physical disabilities). Other variables, such as birth order, sex, and age, are inherently correlational because they cannot be manipulated, and therefore the scientific knowledge concerning them must be based on correlational evidence. Finally, logistical difficulties in classroom and curriculum research often make it impossible to achieve the logic of the true experiment. However, this circumstance is not unique to educational or psychological research. Astronomers obviously cannot manipulate all the variables affecting the objects they study, yet they are able to arrive at conclusions.

Complex correlational techniques are essential in the absence of experimental research because complex correlational statistics such as multiple regression, path analysis, and structural equation modeling that allow for the partial control of third variables when those variables can be measured. These statistics allow us to recalculate the correlation between two variables after the influence of other variables is removed. If a potential third variable can be measured, complex correlational statistics can help us determine whether that third variable is determining the relationship. These correlational statistics and designs help to rule out certain causal hypotheses, even if they cannot demonstrate the true causal relation definitively.

Stages of scientific investigation: The Role of Case Studies and Qualitative Investigations

The educational literature includes many qualitative investigations that focus less on issues of causal explanation and variable control and more on thick description , in the manner of the anthropologist (Geertz, 1973, 1979). The context of a person's behavior is described as much as possible from the standpoint of the participant. Many different fields (e.g., anthropology, psychology, education) contain case studies where the focus is detailed description and contextualization of the situation of a single participant (or very few participants).

The usefulness of case studies and qualitative investigations is strongly determined by how far scientific investigation has advanced in a particular area. The insights gained from case studies or qualitative investigations may be quite useful in the early stages of an investigation of a certain problem. They can help us determine which variables deserve more intense study by drawing attention to heretofore unrecognized aspects of a person's behavior and by suggesting how understanding of behavior might be sharpened by incorporating the participant's perspective.

However, when we move from the early stages of scientific investigation, where case studies may be very useful, to the more mature stages of theory testing--where adjudicating between causal explanations is the main task--the situation changes drastically. Case studies and qualitative description are not useful at the later stages of scientific investigation because they cannot be used to confirm or disconfirm a particular causal theory. They lack the comparative information necessary to rule out alternative explanations.

Where qualitative investigations are useful relates strongly to a distinction in philosophy of science between the context of discovery and the context of justification . Qualitative research, case studies, and clinical observations support a context of discovery where, as Levin and O'Donnell (2000) note in an educational context, such research must be regarded as "preliminary/exploratory, observational, hypothesis generating" (p. 26). They rightly point to the essential importance of qualitative investigations because "in the early stages of inquiry into a research topic, one has to look before one can leap into designing interventions, making predictions, or testing hypotheses" (p. 26). The orientation provided by qualitative investigations is critical in such cases. Even more important, the results of quantitative investigations--which must sometimes abstract away some of the contextual features of a situation--are often contextualized by the thick situational description provided by qualitative work.

However, in the context of justification, variables must be measured precisely, large groups must be tested to make sure the conclusion generalizes and, most importantly, many variables must be controlled because alternative causal explanations must be ruled out. Gersten (2001) summarizes the value of qualitative research accurately when he says that "despite the rich insights they often provide, descriptive studies cannot be used as evidence for an intervention's efficacy...descriptive research can only suggest innovative strategies to teach students and lay the groundwork for development of such strategies" (p. 47). Qualitative research does, however, help to identify fruitful directions for future experimental studies.

Nevertheless, here is why the sole reliance on qualitative techniques to determine the effectiveness of curricula and instructional strategies has become problematic. As a researcher, you desire to do one of two things.

Objective A

The researcher wishes to make some type of statement about a relationship, however minimal. That is, you at least want to use terms like greater than, or less than, or equal to. You want to say that such and such an educational program or practice is better than another. "Better than" and "worse than" are, of course, quantitative statements--and, in the context of issues about what leads to or fosters greater educational achievement, they are causal statements as well . As quantitative causal statements, the support for such claims obviously must be found in the experimental logic that has been outlined above. To justify such statements, you must adhere to the canons of quantitative research logic.

Objective B

The researcher seeks to adhere to an exclusively qualitative path that abjures statements about relationships and never uses comparative terms of magnitude. The investigator desires to simply engage in thick description of a domain that may well prompt hypotheses when later work moves on to the more quantitative methods that are necessary to justify a causal inference.

Investigators pursuing Objective B are doing essential work. They provide quantitative information with suggestions for richer hypotheses to study. In education, however, investigators sometimes claim to be pursuing Objective B but slide over into Objective A without realizing they have made a crucial switch. They want to make comparative, or quantitative, statements, but have not carried out the proper types of investigation to justify them. They want to say that a certain educational program is better than another (that is, it causes better school outcomes). They want to give educational strictures that are assumed to hold for a population of students, not just to the single or few individuals who were the objects of the qualitative study. They want to condemn an educational practice (and, by inference, deem an alternative quantitatively and causally better). But instead of taking the necessary course of pursuing Objective A, they carry out their investigation in the manner of Objective B.

Let's recall why the use of single case or qualitative description as evidence in support of a particular causal explanation is inappropriate. The idea of alternative explanations is critical to an understanding of theory testing. The goal of experimental design is to structure events so that support of one particular explanation simultaneously disconfirms other explanations. Scientific progress can occur only if the data that are collected rule out some explanations. Science sets up conditions for the natural selection of ideas. Some survive empirical testing and others do not.

This is the honing process by which ideas are sifted so that those that contain the most truth are found. But there must be selection in this process: data collected as support for a particular theory must not leave many other alternative explanations as equally viable candidates. For this reason, scientists construct control or comparison groups in their experimentation. These groups are formed so that, when their results are compared with those from an experimental group, some alternative explanations are ruled out.

Case studies and qualitative description lack the comparative information necessary to prove that a particular theory or educational practice is superior, because they fail to test an alternative; they rule nothing out. Take the seminal work of Jean Piaget for example. His case studies were critical in pointing developmental psychology in new and important directions, but many of his theoretical conclusions and causal explanations did not hold up in controlled experiments (Bjorklund, 1995; Goswami, 1998; Siegler, 1991).

In summary, as educational psychologist Richard Mayer (2000) notes, "the domain of science includes both some quantitative and qualitative methodologies" (p. 39), and the key is to use each where it is most effective (see Kamil, 1995). Likewise, in their recent book on research-based best practices in comprehension instruction, Block and Pressley (2002) argue that future progress in understanding how comprehension works will depend on a healthy interaction between qualitative and quantitative approaches. They point out that getting an initial idea of the comprehension processes involved in hypertext and Web-based environments will involve detailed descriptive studies using think-alouds and assessments of qualitative decision making. Qualitative studies of real reading environments will set the stage for more controlled investigations of causal hypotheses.

The progression to more powerful methods

A final useful concept is the progression to more powerful research methods ("more powerful" in this context meaning more diagnostic of a causal explanation). Research on a particular problem often proceeds from weaker methods (ones less likely to yield a causal explanation) to ones that allow stronger causal inferences. For example, interest in a particular hypothesis may originally emerge from a particular case study of unusual interest. This is the proper role for case studies: to suggest hypotheses for further study with more powerful techniques and to motivate scientists to apply more rigorous methods to a research problem. Thus, following the case studies, researchers often undertake correlational investigations to verify whether the link between variables is real rather than the result of the peculiarities of a few case studies. If the correlational studies support the relationship between relevant variables, then researchers will attempt experiments in which variables are manipulated in order to isolate a causal relationship between the variables.

Summary of principles that support research-based inferences about best practice

Our sketch of the principles that support research-based inferences about best practice in education has revealed that:

• Science progresses by investigating solvable, or testable, empirical problems.
• To be testable, a theory must yield predictions that could possible be shown to be wrong.
• The concepts in the theories in science evolve as evidence accumulates. Scientific knowledge is not infallible knowledge, but knowledge that has at least passed some minimal tests. The theories behind research-based practice can be proven wrong, and therefore they contain a mechanism for growth and advancement.
• Theories are tested by systematic empiricism. The data obtained from empirical research are in the public domain in the sense that they are presented in a manner that allows replication and criticism by other scientists.
• Data and theories in science are considered in the public domain only after publication in peer-reviewed scientific journals.
• Empiricism is systematic because it strives for the logic of control and manipulation that characterizes a true experiment.
• Correlational techniques are helpful when the logic of an experiment cannot be approximated, but because these techniques only help rule out hypotheses, they are considered weaker than true experimental methods.
• Researchers use many different methods to arrive at their conclusions, and the strengths and weaknesses of these methods vary. Most often, conclusions are drawn only after a slow accumulation of data from many studies.

Scientific thinking in educational practice: Reason-based practice in the absence of direct evidence

Some areas in educational research, to date, lack a research-based consensus, for a number of reasons. Perhaps the problem or issue has not been researched extensively. Perhaps research into the issue is in the early stages of investigation, where descriptive studies are suggesting interesting avenues, but no controlled research justifying a causal inference has been completed. Perhaps many correlational studies and experiments have been conducted on the issue, but the research evidence has not yet converged in a consistent direction.

Even if teachers know the principles of scientific evaluation described earlier, the research literature sometimes fails to give them clear direction. They will have to fall back on their own reasoning processes as informed by their own teaching experiences. In those cases, teachers still have many ways of reasoning scientifically.

Tracing the link from scientific research to scientific thinking in practice

Scientific thinking in can be done in several ways. Earlier we discussed different types of professional publications that teachers can read to improve their practice. The most important defining feature of these outlets is whether they are peer reviewed. Another defining feature is whether the publication contains primary research rather than presenting opinion pieces or essays on educational issues. If a journal presents primary research, we can evaluate the research using the formal scientific principles outlined above.

If the journal is presenting opinion pieces about what constitutes best practice, we need to trace the link between those opinions and archival peer-reviewed research. We would look to see whether the authors have based their opinions on peer-reviewed research by reading the reference list. Do the authors provide a significant amount of original research citations (is their opinion based on more than one study)? Do the authors cite work other than their own (have the results been replicated)? Are the cited journals peer-reviewed? For example, in the case of best practice for reading instruction, if we came across an article in an opinion-oriented journal such as Intervention in School and Clinic, we might look to see if the authors have cited work that has appeared in such peer-reviewed journals as Journal of Educational Psychology , Elementary School Journal , Journal of Literacy Research , Scientific Studies of Reading , or the Journal of Learning Disabilities .

These same evaluative criteria can be applied to presenters at professional development workshops or papers given at conferences. Are they conversant with primary research in the area on which they are presenting? Can they provide evidence for their methods and does that evidence represent a scientific consensus? Do they understand what is required to justify causal statements? Are they open to the possibility that their claims could be proven false? What evidence would cause them to shift their thinking?

An important principle of scientific evaluation--the connectivity principle (Stanovich, 2001)--can be generalized to scientific thinking in the classroom. Suppose a teacher comes upon a new teaching method, curriculum component, or process. The method is advertised as totally new, which provides an explanation for the lack of direct empirical evidence for the method. A lack of direct empirical evidence should be grounds for suspicion, but should not immediately rule it out. The principle of connectivity means that the teacher now has another question to ask: "OK, there is no direct evidence for this method, but how is the theory behind it (the causal model of the effects it has) connected to the research consensus in the literature surrounding this curriculum area?" Even in the absence of direct empirical evidence on a particular method or technique, there could be a theoretical link to the consensus in the existing literature that would support the method.

For further tips on translating research into classroom practice, see Warby, Greene, Higgins, & Lovitt (1999). They present a format for selecting, reading, and evaluating research articles, and then importing the knowledge gained into the classroom.

Let's take an imaginary example from the domain of treatments for children with extreme reading difficulties. Imagine two treatments have been introduced to a teacher. No direct empirical tests of efficacy have been carried out using either treatment. The first, Treatment A, is a training program to facilitate the awareness of the segmental nature of language at the phonological level. The second, Treatment B, involves giving children training in vestibular sensitivity by having them walk on balance beams while blindfolded. Treatment A and B are equal in one respect--neither has had a direct empirical test of its efficacy, which reflects badly on both. Nevertheless, one of the treatments has the edge when it comes to the principle of connectivity. Treatment A makes contact with a broad consensus in the research literature that children with extraordinary reading difficulties are hampered because of insufficiently developed awareness of the segmental structure of language. Treatment B is not connected to any corresponding research literature consensus. Reason dictates that Treatment A is a better choice, even though neither has been directly tested.

Direct connections with research-based evidence and use of the connectivity principle when direct empirical evidence is absent give us necessary cross-checks on some of the pitfalls that arise when we rely solely on personal experience. Drawing upon personal experience is necessary and desirable in a veteran teacher, but it is not sufficient for making critical judgments about the effectiveness of an instructional strategy or curriculum. The insufficiency of personal experience becomes clear if we consider that the educational judgments--even of veteran teachers--often are in conflict. That is why we have to adjudicate conflicting knowledge claims using the scientific method.

Let us consider two further examples that demonstrate why we need controlled experimentation to verify even the most seemingly definitive personal observations. In the 1990s, considerable media and professional attention were directed at a method for aiding the communicative capacity of autistic individuals. This method is called facilitated communication. Autistic individuals who had previously been nonverbal were reported to have typed highly literate messages on a keyboard when their hands and arms were supported over the typewriter by a so-called facilitator. These startlingly verbal performances by autistic children who had previously shown very limited linguistic behavior raised incredible hopes among many parents of autistic children.

Unfortunately, claims for the efficacy of facilitated communication were disseminated by many media outlets before any controlled studies had been conducted. Since then, many studies have appeared in journals in speech science, linguistics, and psychology and each study has unequivocally demonstrated the same thing: the autistic child's performance is dependent upon tactile cueing from the facilitator. In the experiments, it was shown that when both child and facilitator were looking at the same drawing, the child typed the correct name of the drawing. When the viewing was occluded so that the child and the facilitator were shown different drawings, the child typed the name of the facilitator's drawing, not the one that the child herself was looking at (Beck & Pirovano, 1996; Burgess, Kirsch, Shane, Niederauer, Graham, & Bacon, 1998; Hudson, Melita, & Arnold, 1993; Jacobson, Mulick, & Schwartz, 1995; Wheeler, Jacobson, Paglieri, & Schwartz, 1993). The experimental studies directly contradicted the extensive case studies of the experiences of the facilitators of the children. These individuals invariably deny that they have inadvertently cued the children. Their personal experience, honest and heartfelt though it is, suggests the wrong model for explaining this outcome. The case study evidence told us something about the social connections between the children and their facilitators. But that is something different than what we got from the controlled experimental studies, which provided direct tests of the claim that the technique unlocks hidden linguistic skills in these children. Even if the claim had turned out to be true, the verification of the proof of its truth would not have come from the case studies or personal experiences, but from the necessary controlled studies.

Another example of the need for controlled experimentation to test the insights gleaned from personal experience is provided by the concept of learning styles--the idea that various modality preferences (or variants of this theme in terms of analytic/holistic processing or "learning styles") will interact with instructional methods, allowing teachers to individualize learning. The idea seems to "feel right" to many of us. It does seem to have some face validity, but it has never been demonstrated to work in practice. Its modern incarnation (see Gersten, 2001, Spear-Swerling & Sternberg, 2001) takes a particularly harmful form, one where students identified as auditory learners are matched with phonics instruction and visual and/or kinesthetic learners matched with holistic instruction. The newest form is particularly troublesome because the major syntheses of reading research demonstrate that many children can benefit from phonics-based instruction, not just "auditory" learners (National Reading Panel, 2000; Rayner et al., 2002; Stanovich, 2000). Excluding students identified as "visual/kinesthetic" learners from effective phonics instruction is a bad instructional practice--bad because it is not only not research based, it is actually contradicted by research.

A thorough review of the literature by Arter and Jenkins (1979) found no consistent evidence for the idea that modality strengths and weaknesses could be identified in a reliable and valid way that warranted differential instructional prescriptions. A review of the research evidence by Tarver and Dawson (1978) found likewise that the idea of modality preferences did not hold up to empirical scrutiny. They concluded, "This review found no evidence supporting an interaction between modality preference and method of teaching reading" (p. 17). Kampwirth and Bates (1980) confirmed the conclusions of the earlier reviews, although they stated their conclusions a little more baldly: "Given the rather general acceptance of this idea, and its common-sense appeal, one would presume that there exists a body of evidence to support it. UnfortunatelyÉno such firm evidence exists" (p. 598).

More recently, the idea of modality preferences (also referred to as learning styles, holistic versus analytic processing styles, and right versus left hemispheric processing) has again surfaced in the reading community. The focus of the recent implementations refers more to teaching to strengths, as opposed to remediating weaknesses (the latter being more the focus of the earlier efforts in the learning disabilities field). The research of the 1980s was summarized in an article by Steven Stahl (1988). His conclusions are largely negative because his review of the literature indicates that the methods that have been used in actual implementations of the learning styles idea have not been validated. Stahl concludes: "As intuitively appealing as this notion of matching instruction with learning style may be, past research has turned up little evidence supporting the claim that different teaching methods are more or less effective for children with different reading styles" (p. 317).

Obviously, such research reviews cannot prove that there is no possible implementation of the idea of learning styles that could work. However, the burden of proof in science rests on the investigator who is making a new claim about the nature of the world. It is not incumbent upon critics of a particular claim to show that it "couldn't be true." The question teachers might ask is, "Have the advocates for this new technique provided sufficient proof that it works?" Their burden of responsibility is to provide proof that their favored methods work. Teachers should not allow curricular advocates to avoid this responsibility by introducing confusion about where the burden of proof lies. For example, it is totally inappropriate and illogical to ask "Has anyone proved that it can't work?" One does not "prove a negative" in science. Instead, hypotheses are stated, and then must be tested by those asserting the hypotheses.

Reason-based practice in the classroom

Effective teachers engage in scientific thinking in their classrooms in a variety of ways: when they assess and evaluate student performance, develop Individual Education Plans (IEPs) for their students with disabilities, reflect on their practice, or engage in action research. For example, consider the assessment and evaluation activities in which teachers engage. The scientific mechanisms of systematic empiricism--iterative testing of hypotheses that are revised after the collection of data--can be seen when teachers plan for instruction: they evaluate their students' previous knowledge, develop hypotheses about the best methods for attaining lesson objectives, develop a teaching plan based on those hypotheses, observe the results, and base further instruction on the evidence collected.

This assessment cycle looks even more like the scientific method when teachers (as part of a multidisciplinary team) are developing and implementing an IEP for a student with a disability. The team must assess and evaluate the student's learning strengths and difficulties, develop hypotheses about the learning problems, select curriculum goals and objectives, base instruction on the hypotheses and the goals selected, teach, and evaluate the outcomes of that teaching. If the teaching is successful (goals and objectives are attained), the cycle continues with new goals. If the teaching has been unsuccessful (goals and objectives have not been achieved), the cycle begins again with new hypotheses. We can also see the principle of converging evidence here. No one piece of evidence might be decisive, but collectively the evidence might strongly point in one direction.

Scientific thinking in practice occurs when teachers engage in action research. Action research is research into one's own practice that has, as its main aim, the improvement of that practice. Stokes (1997) discusses how many advances in science came about as a result of "use-inspired research" which draws upon observations in applied settings. According to McNiff, Lomax, and Whitehead (1996), action research shares several characteristics with other types of research: "it leads to knowledge, it provides evidence to support this knowledge, it makes explicit the process of enquiry through which knowledge emerges, and it links new knowledge with existing knowledge" (p. 14). Notice the links to several important concepts: systematic empiricism, publicly verifiable knowledge, converging evidence, and the connectivity principle.

Teachers and Research Commonality in a "what works" epistemology

Many educational researchers have drawn attention to the epistemological commonalities between researchers and teachers (Gersten, Vaughn, Deshler, & Schiller, 1997; Stanovich, 1993/1994). A "what works" epistemology is a critical source of underlying unity in the world views of educators and researchers (Gersten & Dimino, 2001; Gersten, Chard, & Baker, 2000). Empiricism, broadly construed (as opposed to the caricature of white coats, numbers, and test tubes that is often used to discredit scientists) is about watching the world, manipulating it when possible, observing outcomes, and trying to associate outcomes with features observed and with manipulations. This is what the best teachers do. And this is true despite the grain of truth in the statement that "teaching is an art." As Berliner (1987) notes: "No one I know denies the artistic component to teaching. I now think, however, that such artistry should be research-based. I view medicine as an art, but I recognize that without its close ties to science it would be without success, status, or power in our society. Teaching, like medicine, is an art that also can be greatly enhanced by developing a close relationship to science (p. 4)."

In his review of the work of the Committee on the Prevention of Reading Difficulties for the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences (Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998), Pearson (1999) warned educators that resisting evaluation by hiding behind the "art of teaching" defense will eventually threaten teacher autonomy. Teachers need creativity, but they also need to demonstrate that they know what evidence is, and that they recognize that they practice in a profession based in behavioral science. While making it absolutely clear that he opposes legislative mandates, Pearson (1999) cautions:

We have a professional responsibility to forge best practice out of the raw materials provided by our most current and most valid readings of research...If professional groups wish to retain the privileges of teacher prerogative and choice that we value so dearly, then the price we must pay is constant attention to new knowledge as a vehicle for fine-tuning our individual and collective views of best practice. This is the path that other professions, such as medicine, have taken in order to maintain their professional prerogative, and we must take it, too. My fear is that if the professional groups in education fail to assume this responsibility squarely and openly, then we will find ourselves victims of the most onerous of legislative mandates (p. 245).

Those hostile to a research-based approach to educational practice like to imply that the insights of teachers and those of researchers conflict. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Take reading, for example. Teachers often do observe exactly what the research shows--that most of their children who are struggling with reading have trouble decoding words. In an address to the Reading Hall of Fame at the 1996 meeting of the International Reading Association, Isabel Beck (1996) illustrated this point by reviewing her own intellectual history (see Beck, 1998, for an archival version). She relates her surprise upon coming as an experienced teacher to the Learning Research and Development Center at the University of Pittsburgh and finding "that there were some people there (psychologists) who had not taught anyone to read, yet they were able to describe phenomena that I had observed in the course of teaching reading" (Beck, 1996, p. 5). In fact, what Beck was observing was the triangulation of two empirical approaches to the same issue--two perspectives on the same underlying reality. And she also came to appreciate how these two perspectives fit together: "What I knew were a number of whats--what some kids, and indeed adults, do in the early course of learning to read. And what the psychologists knew were some whys--why some novice readers might do what they do" (pp. 5-6).

Beck speculates on why the disputes about early reading instruction have dragged on so long without resolution and posits that it is due to the power of a particular kind of evidence--evidence from personal observation. The determination of whole language advocates is no doubt sustained because "people keep noticing the fact that some children or perhaps many children--in any event a subset of children--especially those who grow up in print-rich environments, don't seem to need much more of a boost in learning to read than to have their questions answered and to point things out to them in the course of dealing with books and various other authentic literacy acts" (Beck, 1996, p. 8). But Beck points out that it is equally true that proponents of the importance of decoding skills are also fueled by personal observation: "People keep noticing the fact that some children or perhaps many children--in any event a subset of children--don't seem to figure out the alphabetic principle, let alone some of the intricacies involved without having the system directly and systematically presented" (p. 8). But clearly we have lost sight of the basic fact that the two observations are not mutually exclusive--one doesn't negate the other. This is just the type of situation for which the scientific method was invented: a situation requiring a consensual view, triangulated across differing observations by different observers.

Teachers, like scientists, are ruthless pragmatists (Gersten & Dimino, 2001; Gersten, Chard, & Baker, 2000). They believe that some explanations and methods are better than others. They think there is a real world out there--a world in flux, obviously--but still one that is trackable by triangulating observations and observers. They believe that there are valid, if fallible, ways of finding out which educational practices are best. Teachers believe in a world that is predictable and controllable by manipulations that they use in their professional practice, just as scientists do. Researchers and educators are kindred spirits in their approach to knowledge, an important fact that can be used to forge a coalition to bring hard-won research knowledge to light in the classroom.

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Date Published: 2003 Date Posted: March 2010

• Our Mission

How Teachers Can Learn Through Action Research

A look at one school’s action research project provides a blueprint for using this model of collaborative teacher learning.

When teachers redesign learning experiences to make school more relevant to students’ lives, they can’t ignore assessment. For many teachers, the most vexing question about real-world learning experiences such as project-based learning is: How will we know what students know and can do by the end of this project?

Teachers at the Siena School in Silver Spring, Maryland, decided to figure out the assessment question by investigating their classroom practices. As a result of their action research, they now have a much deeper understanding of authentic assessment and a renewed appreciation for the power of learning together.

Their research process offers a replicable model for other schools interested in designing their own immersive professional learning. The process began with a real-world challenge and an open-ended question, involved a deep dive into research, and ended with a public showcase of findings.

Start With an Authentic Need to Know

Siena School serves about 130 students in grades 4–12 who have mild to moderate language-based learning differences, including dyslexia. Most students are one to three grade levels behind in reading.

Teachers have introduced a variety of instructional strategies, including project-based learning, to better meet students’ learning needs and also help them develop skills like collaboration and creativity. Instead of taking tests and quizzes, students demonstrate what they know in a PBL unit by making products or generating solutions.

“We were already teaching this way,” explained Simon Kanter, Siena’s director of technology. “We needed a way to measure, was authentic assessment actually effective? Does it provide meaningful feedback? Can teachers grade it fairly?”

Focus the Research Question

Across grade levels and departments, teachers considered what they wanted to learn about authentic assessment, which the late Grant Wiggins described as engaging, multisensory, feedback-oriented, and grounded in real-world tasks. That’s a contrast to traditional tests and quizzes, which tend to focus on recall rather than application and have little in common with how experts go about their work in disciplines like math or history.

The teachers generated a big research question: Is using authentic assessment an effective and engaging way to provide meaningful feedback for teachers and students about growth and proficiency in a variety of learning objectives, including 21st-century skills?

Take Time to Plan

Next, teachers planned authentic assessments that would generate data for their study. For example, middle school science students created prototypes of genetically modified seeds and pitched their designs to a panel of potential investors. They had to not only understand the science of germination but also apply their knowledge and defend their thinking.

In other classes, teachers planned everything from mock trials to environmental stewardship projects to assess student learning and skill development. A shared rubric helped the teachers plan high-quality assessments.

Make Sense of Data

During the data-gathering phase, students were surveyed after each project about the value of authentic assessments versus more traditional tools like tests and quizzes. Teachers also reflected after each assessment.

“We collated the data, looked for trends, and presented them back to the faculty,” Kanter said.

Among the takeaways:

• Authentic assessment generates more meaningful feedback and more opportunities for students to apply it.
• Students consider authentic assessment more engaging, with increased opportunities to be creative, make choices, and collaborate.
• Teachers are thinking more critically about creating assessments that allow for differentiation and that are applicable to students’ everyday lives.

To make their learning public, Siena hosted a colloquium on authentic assessment for other schools in the region. The school also submitted its research as part of an accreditation process with the Middle States Association.

Strategies to Share

For other schools interested in conducting action research, Kanter highlighted three key strategies.

• Focus on areas of growth, not deficiency:  “This would have been less successful if we had said, ‘Our math scores are down. We need a new program to get scores up,’ Kanter said. “That puts the onus on teachers. Data collection could seem punitive. Instead, we focused on the way we already teach and thought about, how can we get more accurate feedback about how students are doing?”
• Foster a culture of inquiry:  Encourage teachers to ask questions, conduct individual research, and share what they learn with colleagues. “Sometimes, one person attends a summer workshop and then shares the highlights in a short presentation. That might just be a conversation, or it might be the start of a school-wide initiative,” Kanter explained. In fact, that’s exactly how the focus on authentic assessment began.
• Build structures for teacher collaboration:  Using staff meetings for shared planning and problem-solving fosters a collaborative culture. That was already in place when Siena embarked on its action research, along with informal brainstorming to support students.

For both students and staff, the deep dive into authentic assessment yielded “dramatic impact on the classroom,” Kanter added. “That’s the great part of this.”

In the past, he said, most teachers gave traditional final exams. To alleviate students’ test anxiety, teachers would support them with time for content review and strategies for study skills and test-taking.

“This year looks and feels different,” Kanter said. A week before the end of fall term, students were working hard on final products, but they weren’t cramming for exams. Teachers had time to give individual feedback to help students improve their work. “The whole climate feels way better.”

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What is Teacher Research?

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Teacher research is intentional, systematic inquiry by teachers with the goals of gaining insights into teaching and learning, becom­ing more reflective practitioners, effecting changes in the classroom or school, and improving the lives of children.... Teacher research stems from teachers' own questions and seeks practical solutions to issues in their professional lives.... The major components of teacher research are: conceptualization, in which teachers identify a significant problem or interest and determine relevant re­search questions; implementation, in which teachers collect and analyze data; and interpretation, in which teachers examine findings for meaning and take appropriate actions.... Teacher research is systematic in that teachers follow specific procedures and carefully document each step of the process. — " The Nature of Teacher Research " by Barbara Henderson, Daniel R. Meier, and Gail Perry

Teacher Research Resources

The resources below provide early childhood education professionals with tools to learn more about the teacher research process, explore accounts of teachers conducting research in their own classrooms, and connect with others in the field interested in teacher research.

Resources from  Voices of Practitioners

The Nature of Teacher Research Barbara Henderson, Daniel R. Meier, and Gail Perry

The Value of Teacher Research: Nurturing Professional and Personal Growth through Inquiry Andrew J. Stremmel

How To Do Action Research In Your Classroom: Lessons from the Teachers Network Leadership Institute Frances Rust and Christopher Clark

Resources From Other Publications

The resources listed here provide early childhood education professionals with tools to learn more about the teacher research process, explore accounts of teachers conducting research in their own classrooms, and connect with others in the field interested in teacher research.

American Educational Research Association (AERA) AERA encourages scholarly inquiry and promotes the dissemination and application of research results. It includes special interest groups (SIGs) devoted to early childhood and teacher research. Potential members can join AERA and then choose the Action Research or Teachers as Researchers SIGs (See “AR SIG, AERA” and “TR SIG, AERA” below.) AERA holds an annual conference with presentations of early childhood teacher research among many other sessions. www.aera.net

Action Research Special Interest Group, American Educational Research Association (AR SIG, AERA) This group builds community among those engaged in action research and those teaching others to do action research. It offers a blog, links to action research communities, and lists of action research books, journals, and conferences. http://sites.google.com/site/aeraarsig/

Teacher as Researcher Special Interest Group, American Educational Research Association (TAR SIG, AERA) This group consists of AERA members who are teacher educators and preK–12th grade educators; it aims to present teacher research at the AERA conference and elsewhere nationally. Early childhood teacher research is an important part of the group. http://www.aera.net/SIG126/TeacherasResearcherSIG126/tabid/11980/Default.aspx

The Center for Practitioner Research (CFPR) of the National College of Education at National-Louis University CFPR aims to affect education through collaborative scholarship contributing to knowledge, practice, advocacy, and policy in education. The website includes selected action research resources, including links to websites, book lists, conference information, and its online journal  Inquiry in Education . http://nlu.nl.edu/cfpr

Educational Action Research Educational Action Research  is an international journal concerned with exploring the dialogue between research and practice in educational settings. www.tandf.co.uk/journals/reac

Let’s Collaborate, Teacher Research from Access Excellence @ the National Health Museum This site includes useful supports for engaging in teacher research, including examples of K–12 research focused on science education. It offers information on starting a project, examples of teacher research projects, and links to online resources. www.accessexcellence.org/LC/TL/AR/

National Association of Early Childhood Teacher Educators (NAECTE) NAECTE promotes the professional growth of early childhood teacher educators and advocates for improvements to the field. NAECTE’s  Journal of Early Childhood Teacher Education  occasionally publishes teacher research articles, including a special issue focused on teacher research (Volume 31, Issue 3). NAECTE also provides ResearchNets, a forum to foster educational research with teacher research presentations. www.naecte.org

Networks: An On-line Journal for Teacher Research at the University of Wisconsin A venue for sharing reports of action research and discussion on inquiry for teachers at all levels, this journal provides space for discussion of inquiry as a tool to learn about practice and improve its effectiveness. http://journals.library.wisc.edu/index.php/networks

Self-Study Teacher Research: Improving your Practice through Collaborative Inquiry, Student Study Guide from Sage Publications This web-based student study site accompanies a book of the same name; it provides a wealth of information on its own for teachers or teacher educators who conduct studies of their own teaching practice. http://www.sagepub.com/samaras/default.htm

Teacher Action Research from George Mason University This site offers information about the teacher research process, including resources for carrying out teacher research studies. It also contains discussion of current teacher research issues and a comparison of teacher research to other forms of educational research and professional development. http://gse.gmu.edu/research/tr

Teacher Inquiry Communities Network from the National Writing Project (NWP) This network offers information on a mini-grant program supporting an inquiry stance toward teaching and learning. It includes information about the grant program, program reports, and examples of projects (including early elementary projects). http://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/programs/tic

Teaching and Teacher Education This journal aims to enhance theory, research, and practice in teaching and teacher education through the publication of primary research and review papers. http://www.journals.elsevier.com/teaching-and-teacher-education

Voices of Practitioners

How Action Research Can Improve Your Teaching

Do you ever find yourself looking at a classroom problem with not a clue in the world about how to fix it? No doubt, teaching art is difficult. Sometimes the issues we face don’t have easy solutions.

One method that is worth looking into is action research. In action research, a teacher takes the time to analyze a problem and then cycles through specific steps to solve it. If you’re struggling with a problem in your classroom, this might be the perfect strategy to try!

What is action research?

Simply put, action research describes a research methodology used to diagnose and address problems. In a school setting, the teacher plays the role of the researcher, and the students represent the study participants. Action research is a meaningful way for a teacher to find out why students perform the way they do.

The term, “action research,” was coined in 1933 by Kurt Lewin to describe a scenario in which a researcher and participants collaborate to solve a specific problem. Donald Schön  developed this idea further with the term, “reflective practitioner,” to describe a researcher who thinks systematically about their practice.

Educators have taken both of these ideas into the classroom to better serve their students.

Here is a look at the basic structure of an action research cycle. You might notice it looks a lot like the Design Thinking Process.

• The teacher recognizes and wonders about a problem in the classroom.
• The teacher thinks about possible reasons students are having trouble.
• The teacher collects and analyzes data.
• The teacher comes up with solutions to try.
• The teacher analyzes the solution.

In this model, if the first solution is not effective, the cycle starts over again. The teacher recognizes what remains of the problem and repeats the steps to collect more evidence and brainstorm new and different solutions.

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Because the process is cyclical, the teacher can loop through the steps as many times as needed to find a solution. Perhaps the best part of action research is that teachers can see which solutions have made a real impact on their students. If you’re looking for an even more in-depth take on the topic, The Art of Classroom Inquiry: A Handbook for Teacher-Researchers  by Hubbard and Powers is a great place to start.

Action research can be as informal or formal as you need it to be. Data is collected through observation, questioning, and discussion with students. Student artwork, photographs of your classroom at work, video interviews, and surveys are all valid forms of data. Students can be involved throughout the whole process, helping to solve the problem within the classroom. With a formal study for a university, there will be requests for permission to use student data through the Institutional Research Board (IRB) process.

How can action research be implemented in your classroom?

I discovered action research while working on my higher degree. Using action research allowed me to find real solutions for real issues in my classroom and gave me my topic of study for my dissertation at the same time!

The problem I chose to address was how to engage students in an analog photography course in the digital age.

I broke my classes into two groups. I taught the district curriculum to one group and an altered curriculum to another. In the altered version, I included big ideas and themes that were important to students such as family, identity, and community.

To gather data, I observed, compared the quality of the photos, and conducted student interviews. I found students were much more engaged when I switched the projects from a technical study (i.e., demonstrating depth of field) to a more personal focus (breaking the teenage stereotype.)

What are the benefits of action research?

Using action research in my classroom allowed me to involve students in the curriculum process. They were actively more engaged within the classroom and felt ownership of their learning.

I was able to show them that teachers can be lifelong learners, and that inquiry is a powerful way to enact change within the classroom. The students cheered me on as I was writing and defended the results of my study. Plus, I was able to connect with them on a personal level, as we were all students. Furthermore, my teaching practice became more confident, and my understanding of art education theory deepened.

Conducting action research also allowed me to become a leader in my community. I was able to present a way to be a reflective practitioner within my classroom and model it for other teachers. I shared my new knowledge with the other art teachers in my district and invited them to try their own informal studies within their classrooms. We were able to shift our focus from one of compliance to one of inquiry and discovery, thus creating a more engaging learning environment for our students.

Action research provides a way to use your new knowledge immediately in your classroom. It allows you to think critically about why and how you run your art classroom. What could be better?

What kinds of issues are you facing in the classroom right now?

What kind of research study might you be interested in conducting?

Magazine articles and podcasts are opinions of professional education contributors and do not necessarily represent the position of the Art of Education University (AOEU) or its academic offerings. Contributors use terms in the way they are most often talked about in the scope of their educational experiences.

Alexandra Overby

Alexandra Overby, a high school art educator, is one of AOEU’s Adjunct Instructors. She immerses herself in topics of photography practice, visual ethnography, technology in the art room, and secondary curriculum.

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Using new research to improve student motivation, more in this category.

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Teachers know that motivation matters. It is central to student learning; it helps determine how engaged students are in their work, how hard they work, and how well they persevere in the face of challenges. Though we hear mostly about the “achievement gap” between demographic groups, researchers have also identified an “engagement gap,” which the High School Survey of Student Engagement calls “both more pernicious and potentially more addressable.”

Despite its obvious importance, student motivation is not a focus of today’s education system. Motivation is hard to characterize and quantify, and it is influenced by many factors outside the classroom. Partly because of these challenges, many teachers feel they can do little to improve motivation. But a growing body of research shows that they can: teachers can employ a number of strategies that have been proven to enhance students’ engagement in learning.

In a recent  Carnegie report, “ Motivation Matters: How New Research Can Help Teachers Boost Student Engagement ,” Susan Headden and Sarah McKay look at the new psychological and behavioral research focused on building motivation—how students respond to incentives to learn, how they see themselves as learners, and what they consider to be their place in school. As the report shows, educators can fortify the non-instructional side of student success in three essential ways: encouraging positive behaviors by offering rewards and emphasizing the value of students’ work, improving their academic mindsets, and enhancing their sense of connectedness with their teachers and their peers.

Teachers can employ a number of strategies that have been proven to enhance students’ engagement. Twitter

Rewards and Value

Teachers have long offered incentives for directing student behavior. Gold stars, detentions, grades—all can light fires under students. But research shows that these sorts of extrinsic rewards can also undermine students’ intrinsic motivation for learning. For example, in an oft-cited 1973 study, preschoolers were promised and received a reward for drawing. The children later chose to spend less of their free time drawing than they had prior to receiving the reward. The findings don’t mean, however, that incentives have a universally negative effect on intrinsic motivation. In the same study, students who initially showed little inherent interest in drawing, and who then received an un expected reward for doing so, later chose to spend more of their free time on that activity.

An additional problem with rewards, says Chris Hulleman, a research associate professor at the University of Virginia, is that they offer the teacher an “out”—they allow him to disregard his role in making a lesson more meaningful. A better motivation-booster, says Hulleman and other experts, is to focus on the value of the task. This requires educators to provide meaningful activities explicitly connected to things students care about. For example, in a 2009 study, Hulleman and Judith Harackiewicz assigned over 250 high schoolers to two groups; one group regularly wrote summaries of the science material they were learning in class, and the other wrote about the usefulness of this material to their lives. In this latter group, students who had started with low expectations of their success in the course reported a higher interest in science and higher grades in the course than similar students in the group that only wrote summaries.

Extrinsic rewards can produce results, particularly if they are unexpected, prize mastery of skills over absolute performance, or encourage identifiable behaviors rather than outcomes. But getting students to see the value in their schoolwork by connecting concepts to their lives may be a more effective way for teachers to boost student engagement.

Getting students to value their schoolwork may be a more effective way to boost engagement. Twitter

Student Mindsets

Evidence is mounting that academic mindsets are extremely important to student success.  Students’ sense of belonging in their learning environment, their perceptions of how or whether “kids like them” succeed academically, and the extent to which they believe that hard work and persistence pay off—all of these have a powerful effect on student motivation.

In a 2011 study, for instance, freshman at a selective college were given reports ostensibly compiled from a survey of older students at the school. One group’s report showed that these older students had initially worried about whether they belonged in college, but that these concerns dissipated over time; the other group’s report did not address the issue of social belonging. Both groups wrote essays and gave speeches describing how their own college experiences related to the survey results. African-American students who read and reflected on how belonging uncertainty is both common and temporary had dramatically higher GPAs over the course of three years than the control group (who read surveys and wrote essays about topics other than belonging, such as social-political attitudes), cutting the achievement gap between black and white students by 79 percent.

The good news for teachers is that student mindsets aren’t set in stone; educators have the power to positively influence students’ perceptions of themselves as learners. Research findings like the above show that even relatively simple classroom interventions can have a large effect.

The good news for teachers is that student mindsets aren’t set in stone. Twitter

Student Relationships

Students care when they believe that other people care about them. They are less likely to drop out, and more likely to feel positively about school, when they have ongoing connections with teachers. Likewise, when they associate with highly-engaged peers, they become more engaged themselves.

Schools can do a lot to ensure that students feel cared about in the learning environment. Check & Connect, a program used by Chicago Public Schools, carefully monitors students’ grades, attendance, and performance data to identify those most at risk of disengaging from school. Each of these students is paired with a trained mentor who helps him with personal and academic issues. In one study, chronically-absent elementary students participated in the program for two years, and at the end of that time, 40 percent were engaged in and regularly attending school. That outcome represents a 135 percent improvement over baseline behavior.

Even smaller-scale classroom interventions can make a big difference in promoting positive school-based relationships. Teachers can hold morning meetings and encourage students to work in groups in order to foster environments in which students feel safe and supported.

An Issue of Scale

None of these strategies for boosting motivation is necessarily new; good teachers have always incentivized productive behaviors, encouraged positive mindsets, and created caring and connected classroom environments. But the new research adds evidence that these factors are vital to student success, and they show that, through practical interventions, they can be changed. The challenge now is to extend best practices beyond isolated classrooms, making the work systematic and sustained.

The barriers to scaling are many. Measurement , in particular, is a significant problem. Tools like Angela Duckworth’s Grit Scale and the KIPP character growth card assess non-cognitive skills and dispositions, but even experts concede that measurement is difficult to do reliably and validly. Professional support for teachers is another issue. Educators need to be trained on how to incorporate motivation-boosting strategies into their everyday instruction. And the education system as a whole must do a better job of translating research findings into practice.

Though challenges remain, researchers and practitioners are conducting promising experiments aimed at identifying and scaling the most effective strategies for improving student motivation. Read the full report to learn more about these efforts.

Permanent link to page: https://www.carnegiefoundation.org/blog/using-new-research-to-improve-student-motivation/

40+ Reasons Why Research Is Important in Education

Do you ever wonder why research is so essential in education? What impact does it really have on teaching and learning?

These are questions that plague many students and educators alike.

According to experts, here are the reasons why research is important in the field of education.

Joseph Marc Zagerman, Ed.D. 

Assistant Professor of Project Management, Harrisburg University of Science and Technology 

Wisdom is knowledge rightly applied. Conducting research is all about gaining wisdom. It can be an exciting part of a college student’s educational journey — be it a simple research paper, thesis, or dissertation. 

Related: What Is the Difference Between Knowledge and Wisdom?

As we know, there is primary research and secondary research: 

• Primary research is first-hand research where the primary investigator (PI) or researcher uses a quantitative, qualitative, or mixed-methodology approach in gaining original data. The process of conducting primary research is fascinating but beyond the scope of this article. 
• In contrast, secondary research examines secondhand information by describing or summarizing the work of others. This article focuses on the benefits of conducting secondary research by immersing oneself in the literature.  

Research develops students into becoming more self-sufficient

There are many benefits for college students to engage in scholarly research. For example, the research process itself develops students into becoming more self-sufficient. 

In other words,  students enhance their ability to ferret out information  regarding a specific topic with a more functional deep dive into the subject matter under investigation. 

The educational journey of  conducting research allows students to see the current conversations  taking place regarding a specific topic. One can parse out the congruity and incongruity among scholars about a particular topic. 

Developing one’s  fundamental library skills  is a tremendous upside in becoming self-sufficient. And yet another benefit of conducting scholarly research is reviewing other writing styles, which often enhances one’s reading and writing skills.   

Conducting an annotated bibliography is often a critical first step in conducting scholarly research. Reviewing, evaluating, and synthesizing information from several sources further  develops a student’s critical thinking skills. 

Related: 9 Critical Thinking Examples

Furthermore, in becoming immersed in the literature, students can recognize associated gaps , problems , or opportunities for additional research. 

From a doctoral perspective, Boote & Beile (2005) underscore the importance of conducting a literature review as the foundation for sound research and acquiring the skills and knowledge in analyzing and synthesizing information.  

So, if conducting research is beneficial for college students, why do some college students have problems with the process or believe it doesn’t add value? 

First off, conducting research is hard work . It takes time. Not to make a sweeping generalization, but some college students embrace a  “fast-food”  expectation of academic assignments. 

For example, finish a quiz, complete a discussion board, or watch a YouTube video and check it off your academic to-do list right away. In contrast, conducting a literature review takes time. It’s hard work.

It requires discipline, focus, and effective time management strategies. 

Yet, good, bad, or indifferent, it remains that the process of conducting research is often perceived as a non-value-added activity for many college students. Why is this so? Is there a better way?   

From an educational standpoint, research assignments should not be a “one and done.” Instead, every course should provide opportunities for students to engage in research of some sort. 

If a student must complete a thesis or dissertation as part of their degree requirement, the process should begin early enough in the program. 

But perhaps the most important note for educators is to align the research process with real-world takeaways . That builds value . That is what wisdom is all about. 

Dr. John Clark, PMP 

Corporate Faculty (Project Management), Harrisburg University of Science and Technology 

Research provides a path to progress and prosperity

The research integrates the known with the unknown. Research becomes the path to progress and prosperity. Extant knowledge, gathered through previous research, serves as the foundation to attaining new knowledge. 

The essence of research is a continuum.

Only through research is the attainment of new knowledge possible. New knowledge, formed through new research, is contributed back to the knowledge community. In the absence of research, the continuum of knowledge is severed. 

Reminiscent of the continuum of knowledge, the desire and understanding to conduct research must transcend into the next generation. This magnifies the relevance to convey the techniques and the desire to seek new knowledge to the younger generations. 

Humbly, it is argued that education possibly serves to facilitate the importance of research. The synergy between research and education perpetuates the continuum of knowledge. 

Through education, the younger generations are instilled with the inspiration to address the challenges of tomorrow. 

Related: Why Is Education Important in Our Life?

It plants the seeds for scientific inquiry into the next generation

Research, whether qualitative or quantitative , is grounded in scientific methods . Instructing our students in the fundamentals of empirically-based research effectively plants the seeds for scientific inquiry into the next generation. 

The application and pursuit of research catalyze critical thinking . Rather than guiding our students to apply pre-existing and rote answers to yesterday’s challenges, research inspires our students to examine phenomena through new and intriguing lenses. 

The globalized and highly competitive world of today effectively demands the younger generations to think  critically  and  creatively  to respond to the new challenges of the future. 

Consequently, through research and education, the younger generations are  inspired  and  prepared  to find new knowledge that advances our community. Ultimately, the synergy between research and education benefits society for generations to come. 

Professor John Hattie and Kyle Hattie

Authors, “ 10 Steps to Develop Great Learners “

Research serves many purposes

Imagine your doctor or pilot disregarding research and relying on experience, anecdotes, and opinions. Imagine them being proud of not having read a research article since graduation. Imagine them depending on the tips and tricks of colleagues.

Research serves many great purposes, such as:

• Keeping up to date with critical findings
• Hearing the critiques of current methods of teaching and running schools
• Standing on the shoulders of giants to see our world better

Given that so much educational research is now available, reading syntheses of the research, hearing others’ interpretation and implementation of the research, and seeing the research in action helps. 

What matters most is the interpretation of the research — your interpretation, the author’s interpretation, and your colleagues’ interpretation. It is finding research that improves our ways of thinking, our interpretations, and our impact on students. 

There is also much to be gained from reading about the methods of research, which provide ways for us to question our own impact, our own theories of teaching and learning, and help us critique our practice by standing on the shoulders of others. 

Research also helps to know what is exciting, topical, and important.

It enables us to hear other perspectives

Statements without research evidence are but opinions. Research is not only about what is published in journals or books, but what we discover in our own classes and schools, provided we ask,  “What evidence would I accept that I am wrong?” 

This is the defining question separating research from opinion. As humans, we are great at self-confirmation — there are always students who succeed in our class, we are great at finding evidence we were right, and we can use this evidence to justify our teaching. 

But what about those who did not succeed? We can’t be blind about them, and we should not ascribe their lack of improvement to them (poor homes, unmotivated, too far behind) but to us. 

We often need to hear other perspectives of the evidence we collect from our classes and hear more convincing explanations and interpretations about what worked best and what did not; who succeeded and who did not; and were the gains sufficient. 

When we do this with the aim of improving our impact on our students, then everyone is the winner.

It provides explanations and bigger picture interpretations

Research and evaluation on your class and school can be triangulated with research studies in the literature to provide alternative explanations, to help see the importance (or not) of the context of your school. And we can always write our experiences and add to the research.

For example, we have synthesized many studies of how best parents can influence their children to become great learners. Our fundamental interpretation of the large corpus of studies is that it matters more how parents think when engaged in parenting. 

For instance, the expectations, listening and responsive skills, how they react to error and struggle, and whether their feedback was heard, understood, and actionable. 

Research is more than summarizing ; it provides explanations and bigger picture interpretations, which we aimed at in our “10 steps for Parents” book.

Dr. Glenn Mitchell, MPH, CPE, FACEP

Vice Provost for Institutional Effectiveness , Harrisburg University of Science and Technology 

Research gives us better knowledge workers

There is a tremendous value for our society from student participation in scientific research. At all levels – undergraduate, master’s, and Ph.D. —students learn the scientific method that has driven progress since the Enlightenment over 300 years ago. 

• They learn to observe carefully and organize collected data efficiently. 
• They know how to test results for whether or not they should be believed or were just a chance finding. 
• They learn to estimate the strength of the data they collect and see in other scientists’ published work. 

With its peer review and wide visibility, the publication process demands that the work be done properly , or it will be exposed as flawed or even falsified. 

So students don’t just learn how to do experiments, interviews, or surveys. They learn that the process demands rigor and ethical conduct to obtain valid and reliable results. 

Supporting and educating a new generation of science-minded citizens makes our population more likely to support proven facts and take unproven allegations with a grain of salt until they are rigorously evaluated and reviewed. 

Thus, educating our students about research and involving them with hands-on opportunities to participate in research projects gives us better knowledge workers to advance technology and produce better citizens.

Chris A. Sweigart, Ph.D.

Board Certified Family Physician | Education Consultant, Limened

Research plays a critical role in education as a guide for effective practices, policies, and procedures in our schools. 

Evidence-based practice, which involves educators intentionally engaging in instructional practices and programs with strong evidence for positive outcomes from methodologically sound research, is essential to ensure the greatest probability of achieving desired student outcomes in schools.

It helps educators have greater confidence to help students achieve outcomes

There are extensive options for instructional practices and programs in our schools, many of which are promoted and sold by educational companies. In brief, some of these works benefit students, and others don’t, producing no results or even negatively impacting students.

Educators need ways to filter through the noise to find practices that are most likely to actually produce positive results with students. 

When a practice has been identified as evidence-based, that means an array of valid, carefully controlled research studies have been conducted that show significant, positive outcomes from engaging in the practice. 

By choosing to engage in these practices, educators can have greater confidence in their ability to help students achieve meaningful outcomes.

There are organizations focused on evaluating the research base for programs and practices to determine whether they are evidence-based. 

For example, some websites provide overviews of evidence-based practices in education while my website provides practical guides for teachers on interventions for academic and behavioral challenges with a research rating scale. 

Educators can use these resources to sift through the research, which can sometimes be challenging to access and translate, especially for busy teachers.

It supports vulnerable student populations

Schools may be especially concerned about the success of vulnerable student populations, such as students with disabilities , who are at far greater risk than their peers of poor short and long-term outcomes. 

In many cases, these students are already behind their peers one or more years academically and possibly facing other challenges.

With these vulnerable populations, it’s imperative that we engage in practices that benefit them and do so faster than typical practice—because these students need to catch up! 

That said, every minute and dollar we spend on a practice not supported by research is a gamble on students’ well-being and futures that may only make things worse. 

These populations of students need our best in education, which means choosing practices with sound evidence that are most likely to help.  

If I were going to a doctor for a serious illness, I would want them to engage in practice guided by the cutting edge of medical science to ensure my most significant chance of becoming healthy again. And I want the same for our students who struggle in school.

Will Shaw PhD, MSc

Sport Scientist and Lecturer | Co-founder, Sport Science Insider

Research creates new knowledge and better ideas

At the foundation of learning is sharing knowledge, ideas, and concepts. However, few concepts are set in stone; instead, they are ever-evolving ideas that hopefully get closer to the truth . 

Research is the process that underpins this search for new and better-defined ideas. For this reason, it is crucial to have very close links between research and teaching. The further the gap, the less informed teaching will become. 

Research provides answers to complicated problems

Another key concept in education is sharing the reality that most problems are complicated — but these are often the most fun to try to solve. Such as, how does the brain control movement? Or how can we optimize skill development in elite athletes?

Here, research can be used to show how many studies can be pulled together to find answers to these challenging problems. But students should also understand that these answers aren’t perfect and should be challenged.

Again, this process creates a deeper learning experience and students who are better equipped for the world we live in.

Basic understanding of research aids students in making informed decisions

We’re already seeing the worlds of tech and data drive many facets of life in a positive direction — this will no doubt continue. However, a byproduct of this is that data and science are commonly misunderstood, misquoted, or, in the worst cases, deliberately misused to tell a false story. 

If students have a basic understanding of research, they can make informed decisions based on reading the source and their own insight. 

This doesn’t mean they have to mean they disregard all headlines instead, they can decide to what extent the findings are trustworthy and dig deeper to find meaning. 

A recent example is this BBC News story  that did an excellent job of reporting a study looking at changes in brain structure as a result of mild COVID. The main finding of a 2% average loss in brain structure after mild COVID sounds alarming and is one of the findings from the study. 

However, if students have the ability to scan the full article  linked in the BBC article, they could learn that: 

• The measure that decreased by 2% was a ‘proxy’ (estimate) for tissue damage 
• Adults show 0.2 – 0.3% loss every year naturally
• Some covid patients didn’t show any loss at all, but the average loss between the COVID and control group was 2%
• We have no idea currently if these effects last more than a few weeks or months (more research is in progress)

This is an excellent research paper, and it is well-reported, but having the ability to go one step further makes so much more sense of the findings. This ability to understand the basics of research makes the modern world far easier to navigate.

Helen Crabtree

Teacher and Owner, GCSE Masterclass

It enables people to discover different ideas 

Research is crucial to education. It enables people to discover different ideas, viewpoints, theories, and facts. From there, they will weigh up the validity of each theory for themselves. 

Finding these things out for oneself causes a student to think more deeply and come up with their personal perspectives, hypotheses, and even to question widely held facts. This is crucial for independent thought and personal development.

To distortion and manipulation — a frighteningly Orwellian future awaits us if research skills are lost. 

You only need to look at current world events and how freedom of the media and genuine journalistic investigation (or research) is distorting the understanding of the real world in the minds of many people in one of the most powerful countries in the world. 

Only those who are able to conduct research and evaluate the independence of facts can genuinely understand the world. 

Genuine research opens young people’s eyes to facts and opinions

Furthermore, learning how to conduct genuine research instead of merely a Wikipedia or Google search is a skill in itself, allowing students to search through archives and find material that is not widely known about and doesn’t appear at the top of search engines. 

Genuine research will open young people’s eyes to facts and opinions that may otherwise be hidden. This can be demonstrated when we look at social media and its algorithms.

Essentially, if you repeatedly read or “like” pieces with a specific worldview, the algorithm will send you more articles or videos that further back up that view. 

This, in turn, creates an echo chamber whereby your own opinion is repeatedly played back to you with no opposing ideas or facts, reinforcing your view in a one-sided way.

Conducting genuine research is the antidote.

Lastly, by conducting research, people discover how to write articles, dissertations, and conduct their own experiments to justify their ideas. A world without genuine, quality research is a world that is open.

Pritha Gopalan, Ph.D.

Director of Research and Learning, Newark Trust for Education

It allows us to understand progress and areas of development

Research is vital in education because it helps us be intentional about how we frame and document our practice. At The Trust , we aim to synthesize standards-based and stakeholder-driven frames to ensure that quality also means equity.

Research gives us a lens to look across time and space and concretely understand our progress and areas for improvement. We are  careful  to include all voices through representative and network sampling to include multiple perspectives from different sites.

Good research helps us capture variation in practice, document innovation, and share bright spots and persistent challenges with peers for mutual learning and growth. 

This is key to our work as educators and a city-based voice employing and seeking to amplify asset-based discourses in education.

Research represents stakeholders’ aspirations and needs

When done in  culturally sustaining  and  equitable ways , research powerfully represents stakeholder experiences, interests, aspirations, and needs. Thus, it is critical to informed philanthropy, advocacy, and the continuous improvement of practice. 

Our organization is constantly evolving in our own cultural competence . It embodies this pursuit in our research so that the voices of the educators, families, children, and partners that we work with are harmonized .

This is done to create the “big picture” of where we are and where we need to get together to ensure equitable and quality conditions for learning in Newark.

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Jessica Robinson

Educator | Human Resources and Marketing Manager, SpeakingNerd

Research makes the problem clearer

In the words of Stanley Arnold,  “Every problem contains within itself the seeds of its own solution.”  These words truly highlight the nature of problems and solutions. 

If you understand a problem thoroughly, you eventually approach closer to the solution for you begin to see what makes the problem arise. When the root of the problem is clear, the solution becomes obvious. 

For example, if you suffer from headaches frequently, your doctor will get specific tests done to understand the exact problem (which is research). Once the root cause of the headache becomes clear, your doctor will give you suitable medicines to help you heal. 

This implies that to reach a solution, it is crucial for us to understand the problem first. Research helps us with that. By making the problem clearer, it helps us pave closer to the solution. 

As the main aim of education is to produce talented individuals who can generate innovative solutions to the world’s problems, research is of utmost importance. 

Research boosts critical thinking skills

Critical thinking is defined as observing, understanding, analyzing, and interpreting information and arguments to form suitable conclusions. 

In today’s world, critical thinking skills are the most valued skills. Companies look for a candidate’s critical thinking skills before hiring him. This is because critical thinking skills promote innovation, and innovation is the need of the hour in almost every sector. 

Further, research is one of the most effective ways of developing critical thinking skills. When you conduct research, you eventually learn the art of observing, evaluating, analyzing, interpreting information, and deriving conclusions. So, this is another major reason why research is crucial in education. 

Research promotes curiosity

In the words of Albert Einstein ,  “Curiosity is more important than knowledge.”  Now, you may wonder why so? Basically, curiosity is a strong desire to learn or know things. It motivates you to pursue an everlasting journey of learning. 

Every curious individual observes things, experiments, and learns. It seems that knowledge follows curiosity, but the vice versa is not true. An individual may gain a lot of knowledge about multiple things despite not being curious. But, then, he might not use his knowledge to engage in innovation because of the lack of curiosity. 

Hence, his knowledge might become futile, or he may just remain a bookworm. So, curiosity is more important than knowledge, and research promotes curiosity. How? 

The answer is because research helps you plunge into things. You observe what is not visible to everyone. You explore the wonders of nature and other phenomena. The more you know, the more you understand that you don’t know, which ignites curiosity. 

Research boosts confidence and self-esteem

Developing confident individuals is one of the major goals of education. When students undertake the journey of research and come up with important conclusions or results, they develop immense confidence in their knowledge and skills. 

Related: Why is Self Confidence Important?

They feel as if they can do anything. This is another important reason why research is crucial in education. 

Research helps students evolve into independent learners

Most of the time, teachers guide students on the path of learning. But, research opportunities give students chances to pave their own learning path. 

It is like they pursue a journey of learning by themselves. They consult different resources that seem appropriate, use their own methods, and shape the journey on their own. 

This way, they evolve into independent learners, which is excellent as it sets the foundation for lifelong learning. 

Theresa Bertuzzi

Chief Program Development Officer and Co-founder, Tiny Hoppers

Research helps revamp the curriculum and include proven best techniques

Research is critical in education as our world is constantly evolving, so approaches and solutions need to be updated to  best suit  the current educational climate. 

With the influx of child development and psychology studies, educators and child product development experts are  honing  how certain activities, lessons, behavior management, etc., can impact a child’s development.

For example, child development research has led to the development of toy blocks, jigsaws, and shape sorters, which have proven to be linked to: 

• Spatial thinking
• Logical reasoning
• Shape and color recognition

There is  no one-size-fits-all  when approaching educational practices; therefore, we can  revamp  the curriculum and include proven best techniques and methodologies by continuously researching past strategies and looking into new tactics. 

Effective teaching requires practical evidence approaches rather than making it a guessing game. 

The combination of work done by child educators of all ages, and research in child development psychology allow new developments in toys, activities, and practical resources for other educators, child care workers, and parents. Such ensures children can  reap  the benefits of child development research. 

It enables a better understanding of how to adapt methods of instruction

In addition, with all of the various learning styles, researching the diversity in these types will enable a better understanding of how to adapt methods of instruction to all learners’ needs. 

Child development research gives educators, child care workers, and parents the ability to guide the average child at specific age ranges, but  each child is unique in their own needs . 

It is important to note that while this is the average, it is up to the educator and childcare provider to  adapt accordingly  to each child based on their individual needs. 

Scott Winstead

Education Technology Expert | Founder, My eLearning World

It’s the most important tool for expanding our knowledge

Research is an integral part of education for teachers and students alike. It’s our most important tool for expanding our knowledge and understanding of different topics and ideas.

• Educators need to be informed about the latest research to make good decisions and provide students with quality learning opportunities.
• Research provides educators with valuable information about how students learn best so they can be more effective teachers. 
• It also helps us develop new methods and techniques for teaching and allows educators to explore different topics and ideas in more detail.
• For students, research allows them to explore new topics and develop critical thinking skills along with analytical and communication skills.

In short, research is vital in education because it helps us learn more about the world around us and improves the quality of education for everyone involved.

Connor Ondriska

CEO, SpanishVIP

It creates better experiences and improves the quality of education

Research continues to be so important in education because we should constantly be improving as educators. If one of the goals of education is to continually work on making a better world, then the face of education a century ago shouldn’t look the same today. 

You can apply that same logic on a shorter scale, especially with the technological boom . So research is a way that educators can learn about what’s working, what isn’t, and what are the areas we need to focus on. 

For example, we focus purely on distance learning, which means we need to innovate in a field that doesn’t have a ton of research yet. If we’re being generous, we can say that distance education became viable in the 1990s, but people are just now accepting it as a valid way to learn. 

Since you can’t necessarily apply everything you know about traditional pedagogy to an online setting, It’s an entirely different context that requires its own study. 

As more research comes out about the effectiveness and understanding of this type of education, we can adapt as educators to help our students. Ultimately, that research will help us create better experiences and improve the quality of distance education. 

The key here is to make sure that research is available and that teachers actually respond to it. In that sense, ongoing research and continual teacher training can go hand-in-hand. 

It leads to more effective educational approaches

Research in the field of language learning is significant. We’re constantly changing our understanding of how languages are learned. Over just the last century, there have been dozens of new methodologies and approaches. 

Linguists/pedagogues have frequently re-interpreted the language-learning process, and all of this analytical research has revolutionized the way we understand language. 

We started with simple Grammar Translation (how you would learn Latin), and now research focuses on more holistic communication techniques. So we’ve definitely come a long way, but we should keep going. 

Now with distance education, we’re experiencing another shift in language learning. You don’t need to memorize textbook vocabulary. You don’t need to travel abroad to practice with native speakers. 

Thanks to ongoing research, we’ve developed our own method of learning Spanish that’s been shown to be 10x more efficient than traditional classroom experiences. 

So if we’ve been able to do so, then maybe someone will develop an even better methodology in the future. So research and innovation are only leading to more effective educational approaches that benefit the entire society.  

Research helps everyone in the education field to become better

This stands in both the public and private sectors. Even though we’re an education business, public schools should also be adapting to new ways to utilize distance learning. 

As more technology becomes readily available to students, teachers should capitalize on that to ensure everyone receives a better education.

Related: How Important Is Technology in Education  

There is now a vast body of research about technology in the language classroom, so why not take advantage of that research and create better lesson plans? 

So as new research appears, everyone in the education field will become a better teacher. And that statement will stand ten years from now. Education needs to adapt to the needs of society, but we need research to know how we can do that appropriately .  

James Bacon, MSEd

Director of Outreach and Operations, Edficiency

Research gives schools confidence to adopt different practices

Research in education is important to inform teachers, administrators, and even parents about what practices have been shown to impact different outcomes that can be important, like:

• Student learning outcomes (often measured by test scores)
• Graduation and/or attendance rates
• Social-emotional skills 
• College and/or job matriculation rates, among many others

Research can give insights into which programs, teaching methods, curricula, schedules, and other structures provide which benefits to which groups and thus give schools the confidence to adopt these different practices.

It measures the impact of innovations 

Research in education also enables us to measure different innovations that are tried in schools, which is also essential to push the field of education further. 

It also ensures that students learn individually and collectively more than those we’ve educated in the past, or at least in different ways, to respond to changes and help shape society’s future. 

Research can give us the  formal feedback  to know if innovations happening in classrooms, schools, and districts across the country (and the world) are having the  intended  impact and whether or not they should be continued, expanded, discontinued, or used only in specific contexts.

Without research, we might continue to innovate to the detriment of our students and education system without knowing it.

Loic Bellet

Business English Coach, Speak Proper English

It provides numerous advantages to explore profession

Developing a research-based approach to enhance your practice gives you the evidence you need to make changes in your classroom, school, and beyond. 

In the light of the ongoing discussion over what works and why, there are numerous advantages to exploring your profession, whether for immediate improvement via action research and, more broadly, for acquiring awareness and knowledge on topics of interest and significance. 

There are several advantages to incorporating research into your practice. This is why research is a part of teacher education from the beginning. 

Research can be used to:

• Assist you in discovering solutions to specific issues that may arise in your school or classroom.
• Support professional knowledge, competence, and understanding of learning
• Connect you to information sources and expert support networks.
• When implementing change, such as curriculum, pedagogy, or assessment, it’s important to spell out the goals, processes, and objectives.
• Improve your organizational, local, and national grasp of your professional and policy environment, allowing you to educate and lead better strategically and effectively.
• Inside your school and more broadly within the profession, develop your agency, impact, self-efficacy, and voice.
• Each of these may entail an investigation based on evidence out of your environment and evidence from other sources.

Although research methodologies have progressed significantly, the importance of research alone has grown . 

We’ve seen online research gaining popularity, and the value of research is increasing by the day. As a result, companies are looking for online access researchers to work with them and carry out research for accurate data from the internet. 

Furthermore, research became a requirement for survival. We’ll have to do it nonetheless. We can’t make business judgments, launch businesses, or prove theories without extensive research. There has been a lot of effort to create research a base of info and advancement.

Saikiran Chandha

CEO and Founder, Typeset

It offers factual or evidence-based learning approach

It’s evident that research and education are intertwined! On a broader spectrum, education is something that you perceive as a fundamental part of your learning process (in your institutions, colleges, school, etc.). 

It improves your skills, knowledge, social and moral values. But on the other hand, research is something that you owe to as it provides you with the scientific and systemic solution to your educational hardships. 

For example: Research aids in implementing different teaching methods, identifying learning difficulties and addressing them, curriculum development, and more. 

Accordingly, research plays a significant role in offering a factual or evidence-based learning approach to academic challenges and concerns. 

And the two primary benefits of research in education are:

Research helps to improve the education system

Yes, the prime focus of research is to excavate, explore and discover a new, innovative, and creative approach to enhance the teaching and learning methods based on the latest educational needs and advancements. 

Research fuels your knowledge bank

Research is all about learning new things, data sourcing, analysis, and more. So, technically, research replenishes your knowledge bank with factual data. 

Thus, it helps educators or teachers develop their subject knowledge, aids in-depth harvest erudition, and increases overall classroom performance.

Chaye McIntosh, MS, LCADC

Clinical Director,  ChoicePoint Health

It improves the learning curve

Research, I believe, is a fundamental part of education, be it by the student or the teacher. 

When you research a topic, you will not just learn and read about stuff related to the topic but also branch out and learn new and different things. This improves the learning curve, and you delve deeper into topics, develop interest and increase your knowledge. 

Academically and personally, I can grow every day and attain the confidence that the abundance of information brings me.

It builds up understanding and perspective

Research can help you build up understanding and perspective regarding the niche of choice; help you evaluate and analyze it with sound theories and a factual basis rather than just learning just for the sake of it.

Educationally, it can help you form informed opinions and sound logic that can be beneficial in school and routinely. Not only this,  when you do proper research on any educational topic and learn about the facts and figures, chances are you will score better than your classmates who only have textbook knowledge.  

So the research will give you an edge over your peers and help you perform better in exams and classroom discussions.

Matthew Carter

Attorney,  Inc and Go

Solid research is a skill you need in all careers

That goes double for careers like mine. You might think that attorneys learn all the answers in law school, but in fact, we know how to find the answers we need through research. 

Doctors and accountants will tell you the same thing. No one can ever hold all the knowledge they need. You have to be able to find the correct answer quickly. School is the perfect place to learn that.

Research enables you to weigh sources and find the best ones

How do you know the source you have found is reliable? If you are trained in research, you’ve learned how to weigh sources and find the best ones. 

Comparing ideas and using them to draw bigger conclusions helps you not only in your career but in your life. As we have seen politically in the last few years, it enables you to be a more informed citizen.

Research makes you more persuasive

Want to have more civil conversations with your family over the holidays? Being able to dig into a body of research and pull out answers that you actually understand makes you a more effective speaker. 

People are more likely to believe you when you have formed an opinion through research rather than parroting something you saw on the news. They may even appreciate your efforts to make the conversation more logical and civil.

As for me, I spend a lot of time researching business formation now, and I use that in my writing. 

George Tsagas

Owner, eMathZone

Research helps build holistic knowledge

Your background will cause you to approach a topic with a preconceived notion. When you take the time to see the full context of a situation, your perspective changes. 

Researching one topic also expands your perspective of other topics. The information you uncover when studying a particular subject can inform other tangential subjects in the future as you build a greater knowledge of the world and how connected it is. 

As a result, any initial research you do will be a building block for future studies. You will begin each subsequent research process with more information. You will continue to broaden your perspective each time.

Research helps you become more empathic

Even if you don’t change your mind on a subject, researching that topic will expose you to other points of view and help you understand why people might feel differently about a situation. 

The more knowledge you gain about how others think, the more likely you are to humanize them and be more empathetic to diverse viewpoints and backgrounds in the future.

Research teaches you how to learn

Through the research process, you discover where you have information gaps and what questions to ask in order to solve them. It helps you approach a subject with curiosity and a willingness to learn rather than thinking you have the right answer from the beginning.

Georgi Georgiev

Owner, GIGA calculator

It helps us learn about the status quo of existing literature

The starting point of every scientific and non-scientific paper is in-depth literature research.

It helps to:

• gather casual evidence about a specific research topic
• answer a specific scientific question
• learn about the status quo of existing literature
• identify potential problems and raise new questions

Anyone writing a scientific paper needs evidence based on facts to back up theories, hypotheses, assumptions, and claims. However, since most authors can’t derive all the evidence on their own, they have to rely on the evidence provided by existing scientific (and peer-reviewed) literature. 

Subsequently, comprehensive literature research is inevitable. Only by delving deeply into a research topic will the authors gather the data and evidence necessary for a differentiated examination of the current status quo. 

This, in turn, will allow them to develop new ideas and raise new questions. 

Craig Miller

Co-Founder,  Academia Labs LLC

Research supplements knowledge gaps

In the academe, research is critical. Our daily lives revolve around research, making research an integral part of education.

If you want to know which restaurant in your area serves the best steak, you’d have to research on the internet and read reviews. If you want to see the procedure for making an omelet, you’d have to research on the internet or ask your parents. Hence, research is part of our lives, whether we want it or not.

It is no secret that there are a lot of knowledge gaps in the knowledge pool. Research is the only thing that can supplement these gaps and answer the questions with no answers.

It will also provide the correct information to long-debated questions like the shape of the Earth and the evolution of man.

With every information readily available to us with just a click and a scroll on the internet, research is crucial in identifying which data are factual and which are just fake news . More than that, it helps transfer correct information from one person to another while combating the spread of false information.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the importance of research.

Research plays a critical role in advancing our knowledge and understanding of the world around us. Here are some key reasons why research is so important:

• Generates new knowledge : Research is a process of discovering new information and insights. It allows us to explore questions that have not yet been answered, and to generate new ideas and theories that can help us make sense of the world.

• Improves existing knowledge : Research also allows us to build on existing knowledge, by testing and refining theories, and by uncovering new evidence that supports or challenges our understanding of a particular topic.

• Drives innovation : Many of the greatest innovations in history have been driven by research. Whether it’s developing new technologies, discovering new medical treatments, or exploring new frontiers in science, research is essential for pushing the boundaries of what is possible.

• Informs decision-making : Research provides the evidence and data needed to make informed decisions. Whether it’s in business, government, or any other field, research helps us understand the pros and cons of different options, and to choose the course of action that is most likely to achieve our goals.

• Promotes critical thinking : Conducting research requires us to think critically, analyze data, and evaluate evidence. These skills are not only valuable in research, but also in many other areas of life, such as problem-solving, decision-making, and communication.

What is the ultimate goal of a research?

The ultimate goal of research is to uncover new knowledge, insights, and understanding about a particular topic or phenomenon. Through careful investigation, analysis, and interpretation of data, researchers aim to make meaningful contributions to their field of study and advance our collective understanding of the world around us.

There are many different types of research, each with its own specific goals and objectives. Some research seeks to test hypotheses or theories, while others aim to explore and describe a particular phenomenon. Still, others may be focused on developing new technologies or methods for solving practical problems.

Regardless of the specific goals of a given research project, all research shares a common aim: to generate new knowledge and insights that can help us better understand and navigate the complex world we live in.

Of course, conducting research is not always easy or straightforward.

Researchers must contend with a wide variety of challenges, including finding funding, recruiting participants, collecting and analyzing data, and interpreting their results. But despite these obstacles, the pursuit of knowledge and understanding remains a fundamental driving force behind all scientific inquiry.

How can research improve the quality of life?

Research can improve the quality of life in a variety of ways, from advancing medical treatments to informing social policies that promote equality and justice. Here are some specific examples:

• Medical research : Research in medicine and healthcare can lead to the development of new treatments, therapies, and technologies that improve health outcomes and save lives.

For example, research on vaccines and antibiotics has helped to prevent and treat infectious diseases, while research on cancer has led to new treatments and improved survival rates.

• Environmental research : Research on environmental issues can help us to understand the impact of human activities on the planet and develop strategies to mitigate and adapt to climate change.

For example, research on renewable energy sources can help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and protect the environment for future generations.

• Social research : Research on social issues can help us to understand and address social problems such as poverty, inequality, and discrimination.

For example, research on the effects of poverty on child development can inform policies and programs that support families and promote child well-being.

• Technological research : Research on technology can lead to the development of new products and services that improve quality of life, such as assistive technologies for people with disabilities or smart home systems that promote safety and convenience.

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How to Do Great Research

Grad school survival advice from nick feamster and alex gray.

• The Relationship Between Teaching and Research

I remember applying for NSF’s Graduate Research Fellowship many years ago and being asked to answer a question describing my experiences “integrating research and education”.  At the time, I was baffled by the question, as I hadn’t yet done much teaching.  I thought:  Aren’t teaching and research orthogonal?  I’m told by current students that the question no longer exists in the fellowship application, which I think is unfortunate.  That question has stayed with me throughout my career: I regularly re-ask myself questions about integrating research and education.

At least in the United States (and presumably elsewhere, too), university researchers are regularly asked to tie our research back to education: for example, faculty members are regularly asked to describe the “broader impact” of their research, which includes how the results of the research will be incorporated into the curriculum.  I’ve learned that this is no accident; to the contrary, I think it is one of the most important (and under-appreciated) things that researchers should be thinking about.

Although researchers are sometimes asked to think about how research can be integrated in the classroom, I’ve also found that efforts in the classroom can also ultimately result in better research .  In fact, although many educators are not necessarily researchers, the converse is undeniable: It is no accident that some of the best researchers are also excellent teachers.  And, while some strong researchers who are not good teachers do exist, I believe that purposeful teaching effort does in fact result in much better research.

In this post, I’ll describe my views on the relationships between research and teaching, in both directions.  I’ll begin with the more “obvious” notions of how our research ultimately affects education and the curriculum and continue to what I think is the less apparent (and more interesting) direction of how our work on education can also make us better researchers.  Of course, teaching also helps us develop many “general purpose” skills that are also useful in research, including mentoring and supervisory skills, learning to analyze others’ understanding, learning to give feedback, and so forth.  Below, I’ll eschew these practicalities and instead focus on how the relationship between research and education ultimately result in better research ideas.

How Research Affects Teaching

Research results instill fresh material in the classroom.   Although some subjects we learn in the classroom are fairly well-established, many areas of computer science (and I would assume certain other fields, too) are rapidly evolving.  With the rise of large content and service providers such as Google, Amazon, and Facebook; the proliferation of mobile devices; and the spread of connectivity to developing regions (to name a few developments), computer networking looks almost nothing like twenty years ago, and, while certain principles persist, the constraints of the domain and the applications of the technologies are continually evolving. Students strive for concrete examples and applications of concepts to the world that they know which is, incidentally, different from the world we knew when we were students.  New research results represent prevailing theories, the outcome of our cumulative understanding, and the application of concepts to the most relevant problem domains or our time.  I find that there is no better way to keep my course material current than to peruse the latest research and update the material so that it reflects current understanding.

Industry tracks research; students should, too.   Our understanding continues to evolve as new research results emerge.  In many areas, industry aggressively tracks new technologies and research results, and students aim will be more poised to make important contributions in industry if they are well-versed in current technologies.  Students periodically thank me for covering a certain topic or concept in the classroom because “someone asked me about it in a job interview”.  Certainly, there is a balance between educating our students on the big picture and “timeless” concepts (something I discuss more below), but I find that students are often quite grateful for having some exposure to the concepts and problems that industry is thinking about  today .  Instilling course material with fresh research results is one important way that instructors can help this process.

How Teaching Affects Research

I think the more surprising notion is that investing effort in teaching well can actually make us better researchers.  I sometimes find that certain faculty members are too eager to minimize teaching responsibilities in favor of “leaving more time to get research done”.  Now, it is worth acknowledging the source of this angst: many of the administrative aspects of teaching (e.g., grading, responding to student emails, organizational logistics) are incredibly time consuming and do not necessarily offer inherent benefits to research.  Nevertheless, I find that the intellectual aspects of teaching are an indispensable aspect of my own efforts to become a better researcher.  Below, I’ll explain more abstractly why I think teaching makes us better researchers, and, where appropriate, I’ll describe some of my own concrete experiences in this regard.

To create new knowledge, we must first master the existing body of knowledge. Research is the process of creating new knowledge.  Making  progress in creating knowledge requires a significant amount of background knowledge, before one can reach the “frontier” of a topic, where the interesting questions are.  Herb Simon once attested that it takes about ten years of experience to get to the point of great accomplishment in any one area, simply because it takes a significant amount of time to accumulate knowledge in an area.  This necessarily implies that we can’t become great researchers in a subject area merely by taking a class (or even a few classes); we must embed ourselves in that topic area.  I find that teaching a subject is perhaps one of the most efficient ways to become embedded in a subject matter, since the process of explaining concepts to students leaves no room for “cutting corners” in my own understanding.  The process of building understanding in a particular area allows us to develop a deep understanding the paradigms and theories that currently exist, and how those paradigms and the existing knowledge base might be extended (or amended).  Teaching Ph.D. students about a particular subject matter is also a way to bootstrap research, by helping our students get to the frontier of knowledge more quickly than they otherwise would; I sometimes teach seminars on cutting-edge topics (above and beyond my teaching “requirements”) simply because I find the process to be an efficient way of helping students quickly ramp up on a topic where I would like to see more research happening.

On a personal note, I found the process of preparing a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on Software Defined Networking over the past summer tremendously helpful in solidifying my own knowledge in this budding topic area.  This particular sub-field has seen rapid developments over the past five years, and I had found it difficult to take the time to deeply understand many of the latest developments.  I found that teaching the course was a wonderful “forcing function” to familiarize myself with new technologies and ways of thinking, and to gain hands-on experience with tools that had been recently developed.  My hands-on experience with development tools helped me in two ways: First, I was able to suggest better tools for my students to use in their own research; in several cases, students who had been “stuck” using older technologies quickly familiarized themselves with technologies I learned well enough to appreciate.  By investing time to deeply understand how new techniques and technologies might be applied, I was able to make connections between problems we had been trying to solve in the research lab and tools that could be useful for solving them.  Second, I was able to make connections between concepts that had recently been developed to help solve some problems that we had been working on that hadn’t yet been solved.   In one case, for example, as I taught concepts about composition techniques for network policies, I realized that the techniques could be applied to help some of our own technologies scale to much larger networks, which provided a breakthrough on a problem that we had been thinking about for years.

In the process of explaining an existing phenomenon, you might discover that existing explanations, technologies, or theories don’t actually suffice.  According to Thomas Kuhn, research breakthroughs often occur when old paradigms are discarded (or at least amended), thus changing our way of thinking about problems completely.  New paradigms begin with the need to explain or treat facts or situations that existing paradigms don’t handle well.   As instructors, when we attempt to explain various facts or situations to students, we sometimes find that we can’t explain why things are a certain way—our attempts to explain may reveal instances that are not handled or explained well by current paradigms, thus exposing glaring needs to develop new technologies, theories, and paradigms.

I remember my experiences as a teaching assistant for computer networking, as my advisor and I planned lessons to teach Internet routing.  My advisor had long worked on problems where correctness properties and bound were well-defined (e.g., Internet congestion control).  When we came to the topic of Internet routing, however (a topic on which I had some mastery as a result of a summer internship), I found him continually asking me how (or whether) Internet routing offered any guarantees of correct behavior.  How could we be certain that Internet routing algorithms would actually send traffic where it was supposed to go, for example?  We realized in our attempts to codify this in lecture material that  no such guarantees existed!   Frustrated by our inability to explain Internet routing correctness, we spent the next several years formally defining correctness properties for Internet routing and developing tools that checked Internet routing configuration for correctness.  The work eventually resulted in tools that were used by hundreds of network operators and a best paper award at a top networking conference.  When I think about that work, I regularly trace its success to my teaching experience with my advisor, and our initial frustrated attempt to explain some seemingly basic concepts about networking to students.  If it weren’t for that teaching experience, I think that research probably would never have happened.

Teaching encourages us to think about the long road, the big picture, and what “really matters” about a particular research contribution.   I aim to explain  why something is the way it is, beyond simply explaining a concept.  As I explained above, efforts to explain why something is the way it is might sometimes fail to produce a good explanation, opening new possibilities for research.  In other cases, research may offer solutions to a problem  du jour , but sometimes research projects or papers are fairly self-contained, and it takes additional thought to really establish why (or whether) a particular result has broader implications that a student might care about.  As an instructor, I strive to think about the big picture, and why a student should care about a particular research result, theory, or concept five or ten years down the road, long after they have left our classroom and received their degree.  This exercise of thinking about broader implications can make classroom material more palatable to students, most of whom won’t specialize in the particular field you happen to be teaching.  But, it also forces us as researchers to step back and think about why the problems we are working on have broad impact and why they matter to society at large.  Explaining to a classroom of students why a particular result matters is perhaps one of the most useful exercises for distilling a research contribution to its essence.

Motivated Students + Inspiring Teachers = Great Research

I admired my university professors and wanted to emulate them; they are one of the main reasons I wanted to become a university professor in the first place.  Teachers can influence and affect a large number of students in tremendously positive ways.  Indeed, giving students the thirst for knowledge to the point that they want to not just consume existing knowledge but make discoveries themselves is a unique opportunity that we have as educators.  And, certainly, developing smart young students into the researchers of current and future generations is yet another way that our efforts in the classroom can pay long-term dividends for research.

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6 ways to encourage teachers to become researchers

Teacher research is a powerful tool for professional learning. It has the potential to enhance and improve teaching and learning as well as increase teachers’ motivation and boost confidence ( read about one teacher’s experience here ).

It can also give teachers an added feeling of professional autonomy because, unlike conventional training courses, it’s driven and conducted by teachers themselves. The National Education  Association list various other benefits here.

Teacher research: a collaborative process

Teachers are engaged in informal research on a daily basis by being reflective ,  trying new things and observing the impact on learning. What separates teacher research from the everyday is a teacher’s intent to improve classroom practice through systematic inquiry.

However, it's important not to see teacher research as an activity to be carried out in isolation. In fact, the process and outcomes are enhanced when teachers collaborate.

When teacher research is carefully planned and based on informed decisions, it can lead to meaningful results that can be confidently used to base future decisions about teaching and learning. It can also be shared with the wider community for greater benefit. 

The challenges of teacher research

There are many good reasons why teachers should engage in teacher research but what are the challenges?

• Although teacher research can be integrated into regular classroom activities, if it's going to be effective then it needs time to be spent planning, doing, analysing and sharing the research. Teacher workload can make this a challenge.
• Teachers may not have undertaken research before and may need additional training and support to learn about data collection (e.g. using interviews, self-observation, and simple questionnaires).

6 ways to encourage teachers to become researchers in their classrooms:

• Through Lesson Study ; a proven way to impact student outcomes.   Get your practical guide to Lesson Study.
• Support teachers taking part in action research or teacher triads, and encourage them to share their findings so others benefit as well.
• Make it easy for teachers to engage with research evidence and encourage an evidence-informed culture by making research findings accessible; identifying context-specific evidence for teachers; making it a whole school priority; and using appropriate internal and external support.
• Keep track of the impact of new strategies implemented in classrooms and across the school, so you know what does and doesn't work.
• If teachers have shown interest in or are enrolled on a formal qualification, such as a masters degree or diploma, encourage them to share their findings across the school and use their classroom as a place to explore and test ideas and strategies. 
• Encourage the use of video, it will save your staff time when working collaboratively and give an objective insight into both learner and teacher behaviours.

If you have IRIS Connect, encourage your staff to collect and analyse data using the Forms tool (check out the Statify Group in the platform for sample forms you can clone and use).

A number of resources exist to support teachers who are interested in doing research. Here are a few of them:

• The value of action research: Broadening evidence base for teachers
• A  practical guide to Lesson Study

Do you know of any other resources around teacher research? Share them in the comments below.

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Successful mathematicians  understand curriculum concepts, are fluent in mathematical procedures, can solve problems, explain and justify their thinking, and have a positive attitude towards learning mathematics. 

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NORC Evaluation Finds City-Funded Preschool Helps Alleviate Shortage, Improves Child & Family Outcomes

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Free preschool pilot program in Tempe, Arizona, benefits student readiness, as well as parents’ employment and education opportunities

CHICAGO, August 13, 2024 —A new evaluation by NORC at the University of Chicago finds that Tempe, Arizona’s free preschool pilot program, Tempe PRE (2017-present), increased kindergarten readiness and expanded opportunities for parents to obtain more employment, training, and education. The evaluation was funded by a $1.3 million grant from Helios Education Foundation.

The City of Tempe worked with the Tempe Elementary School District and philanthropic organizations to launch Tempe PRE , a $6 million, two-year pilot preschool program housed within classrooms in two of the city’s school districts. The free, full-day program also provided before- and after-school care to make it accessible to working families, many of whom did not have access to preschool options. In fact, a 2017 study found only about one-third of the city’s three- and four-year-olds were enrolled in preschool, leaving more than 1,000 preschoolers unserved per year.  

“Across the nation, as of 2019, 47 percent of four-year-old children from low-income backgrounds were not enrolled in a preschool program,” said Marc Hernandez , the director of NORC’s Early Childhood Research & Practice Collaborative . “There is a greater demand than supply, and programs that are available are often expensive, with insufficient subsidized options that meet low-income and working families’ needs.” 

The Tempe PRE program hired certified teachers and paid them salaries and benefits commensurate with the district’s kindergarten teacher compensation. The teachers underwent training on how to implement an evidence-based curriculum that emphasizes student-led learning, building social-emotional skills, and empowering students to resolve interpersonal conflicts. 

“Across the nation, as of 2019, 47 percent of four-year-old children from low-income backgrounds were not enrolled in a preschool program.”

NORC’s Early Childhood Research & Practice Collaborative worked with local partners to evaluate the program’s impact. Through classroom observation and interviews with principals, teachers, and parents, NORC found that the program’s curriculum was faithfully implemented despite pandemic-related disruptions and benefited both students and their families. Participating students were more prepared for kindergarten and had better vocabulary and social-emotional skills than their peers. NORC shared these results in real time with local partners, allowing them to continuously improve the program.

“NORC’s evaluation allowed us to demonstrate the pilot program’s success to Tempe city councilmembers, who then committed ongoing funding for the program,” said Tim Burch, Tempe’s Community Health & Human Services director. “By clearly defining the program’s benefits, we were able to expand our reach to more children and families who otherwise would not have had access to this education and care.” 

The program’s partners are also now sharing their insights and evaluation results with other cities facing similar preschool access problems. In response to community demand, the city expanded the Tempe PRE program to offer tuition on a sliding scale based on family income. 

Learn More About Evaluating the Tempe Preschool Resource Expansion

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About NORC at the University of Chicago

NORC at the University of Chicago conducts research and analysis that decision-makers trust. As a nonpartisan research organization and a pioneer in measuring and understanding the world, we have studied almost every aspect of the human experience and every major news event for more than eight decades. Today, we partner with government, corporate, and nonprofit clients around the world to provide the objectivity and expertise necessary to inform the critical decisions facing society.

www.norc.org

Contact:  For more information, please contact Eric Young at NORC at  young-eric@norc.org  or (703) 217-6814 (cell).

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Building a Culture of Safety Campaign

The Office of Head Start’s (OHS) top priority is to create safe spaces that families and communities can trust. Every Head Start staff member, leader, and family plays an important role in safeguarding children and preventing safety concerns. We are launching this campaign to provide resources and in-depth support to the Head Start community.

Learn more about the campaign and why it’s so important in this short video from Director Khari M. Garvin.

Building a Culture of Safety

Director Khari Garvin: Hello, I'm Khari Garvin, the Director of the Office of Head Start. Ensuring Head Start programs are safe places for children that families and communities can trust is one of our top priorities. We know that children need physical and emotional safety in order to develop, learn, heal, and thrive. We have heard and witnessed how challenges in recent years, workforce shortages, staff turnover, mental health needs, and more can affect the safety of children and staff.

We are also witnessing a resounding commitment from Head Start programs to remain steadfast in creating environments and relationships where children can thrive. I'm excited to announce the Building a Culture of Safety series to support this Head Start commitment. From August through November, we'll be providing resources and webinars to share a range of strategies in every program area, and then engaging in discussion with you during special office hours we will make available to support child health and safety across the Head Start ecosystem.

Make sure you are subscribed to our emails to ensure you get the notifications promoting this series. Do you know what we mean by building a culture of safety? Head Start programs are spaces where every child is valued and we know that every single person, Head Start leaders, staff members, and families, plays an important role in safeguarding children.

A culture of safety isn't a one and done training or a checklist. It requires a comprehensive, ongoing, and preventative commitment. There are four core messages about the culture of safety approach. You will learn more about these throughout the series, but I will share them now to anchor us. First, is that Head Start leaders support children’s safety and well - being by creating safe program environments, for example, by mapping and reducing potential risks and hazards or creating wellness spaces for staff.

Now, the second core message about the culture of safety approach is that positive guidance from caregivers supports children's social and emotional development and promotes their engagement in the learning environment. Third, Head Start leaders cultivate an organizational culture that sets an expectation for child safeguarding and that builds trust, accountability, empathy, and equity for staff and families.

Leaders establish how we do things in the program with policies and procedures and by putting supports and systems in place to help everyone uphold those expectations. And by the way, did you know that Head Start and Early Head Start grant recipients that encounter program improvement needs related to health and safety, which cannot be covered by your regular budget, can submit a supplemental one-time funding application anytime throughout the year as needs emerge?

Those things in your program that address health and safety like repairs or upgrades to facilities or playgrounds or maybe adding temporary staff positions to achieve lower ratios in classrooms that need extra support. There is a lot of flexibility for these supplemental funds, although they are limited and available on a one - time basis.

I invite you to reach out to your regional office to learn more about the application process. Finally, everyone who works or volunteers in Head Start programs adheres to the Head Start Standards of Conduct, which are the basic professional expectations for working in a Head Start program. This Building a Culture of Safety series will offer strategies and create space for discussions to put these messages into action and develop a culture of safety in every Head Start program.

You can find out more about this series on the ECLKC website. Thank you for your commitment to making sure Head Start programs are safe. We couldn't do it without you. So long. For Building a Culture of Safety campaign information, visit https://qrco.de/bfEsZn to sign up for Office of Head Start email updates. Visit https://qrco.de/bfEsfn .

Produced by the US Department of Health and Human Services.

Approaches to Preventing and Addressing Child Health and Safety Incidents

Join us Aug. 28, 2024 at 2 p.m. ET , for a special webinar , 4 Steps to Healthy and Safe Learning Environments . It focuses on four strategies that align with OHS core messages on child health and safety.

The next day, Aug. 29 at 2 p.m. ET , bring your child health and safety incident questions to a follow-up live office hour . Experts from the National Center on Health, Behavioral Health, and Safety will be on hand to help you promote positive learning experiences for Head Start children and prevent incidents that can jeopardize their well-being. This event is offered with simultaneous interpretation in Spanish.

Register for Webinar Register for Office Hour

The following resources provide additional background for this event:

• Discipline and the Influence of Our Upbringing
• Keep Children Safe Using Active Supervision

Preventing and Addressing Child Incidents Through an Education Lens

Join us Sept. 20, 2024, from 3–4:30 p.m. ET , for a special webinar , 10 Tips for Creating Supportive Environments That Can Prevent Behaviors that Challenge Us . This Teacher Time episode focuses on useful tips for setting up the physical environment, transitions, schedules, routines, and more.

Following the webinar, stay on to participate in a live office hour session. Experts from the National Center on Early, Childhood, Development, Teaching, and Learning will be on hand to answer your questions about addressing child incidents through an education lens.

Register for Webinar and Office Hour

The following resources provide additional information:

• Visual Supports
• Engaging Interactions and Environments
• Positive Behavior Support

Promoting Child Safety Through Staff and Family Partnerships

Save the date, Thursday, Oct. 10, 3–4:30 p.m. ET , for a webinar and office hour discussion with the National Center on Parent, Family, and Community Engagement! Visit this page and be on the lookout for an email invitation as the date approaches.

Parents and families observe, guide, and participate in the everyday learning of their children at home, school, and in their communities in ways that promote children's safety, health, and development. Join this session to explore partnerships with parents as the lifelong educators and advocates for their children. We're sharing strategies for promoting child safety while exploring restorative practices that build and strengthen community, resolve conflict, facilitate individual and community healing, and prevent harm.

Research to Practice: Preventing Child Incidents Through Effective Systems

Save the date, Thursday, Nov. 14, 3–4:30 p.m. ET , for a webinar and office hour discussion with the National Center on Program Management and Fiscal Operations! Visit this page and be on the lookout for an email invitation as the date approaches.

This event explores how enhanced systems thinking and multi-dimensional perspectives can address a critical issue in Head Start programs: preventing and appropriately responding to child incidents. We're sharing tools, recommendations, and strategies to support Head Start leaders and staff in their ongoing efforts to keep children safe. Join to learn how to apply this information for optimal impact on children and their families.

• Using Motivation-based Interview Techniques
• Gallup's 5 Drivers of Organizational Culture
• Employing Values-based Recruitment in Hiring Practices

Resource Type: Article

National Centers: Office of Head Start

Last Updated: August 14, 2024

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National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences

Your environment. your health., air monitoring networks – session i: deciding whether to implement an air monitoring network – co-developing a plan with community partners, partnerships for environmental public health (peph).

August 23, 2024 • 1:00 p.m. - 2:00 p.m. ET

Presentation title: (How) should we do this? Assessing whether to implement air monitoring and exploring resources and tools to accomplish community-partnered projects.

The speakers in this webinar know how to effectively plan and conduct air monitoring projects in a community, and they can help you do the same. The two most important questions to answer at the outset of a community-partnered project are:

• Should we do this?
• What are our goals? 

The speakers will describe tools and frameworks to get clear about project goals, establish effective partnerships, and then achieve project goals.

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Scott Hersey, Ph.D., M.S. , is the founder and lead of the Air Partners group at the Olin College of Engineering. He also advises student teams in capstone programs (SCOPE and Affordable Design and Entrepreneurship), teaches collaborative design, and is developing project-based courses in environmental analysis and engineering.

Air Partners unites community-driven design with scientific research to build local capacity for improving air quality. Through strong community partnerships, robust technical capabilities, and a mission founded on asset-based community development, Air Partners tackles projects that support environmental justice communities in their quest to breathe cleaner air. They help communities collect and analyze data to form the evidence needed for changing policies and mitigating pollution. Learn more about Air Partners by visiting the their webpage.

Tim Dye, M.S. , is the founder of TDEnviro. He has over 30 years of experience in air quality monitoring, data management, and public communication. A visionary and entrepreneur, he has created air quality applications that clearly communicate air quality conditions. Tim is respected as an independent voice in the air monitoring community.

Dye works in many areas:

• Low-cost, air quality sensor evaluation and deployment
• Air quality monitoring
• Data management and analytics
• Community science applications

He is regularly sought for his wide-ranging and strategic insights on air quality sensing by foundations, NGOs, government, industry, and companies worldwide. You can learn more about his work by visiting the TDEnviro website.

Individuals with disabilities who need accommodation to participate in this event should contact Justin Crane at 703-765-0060. TTY users should contact the Federal TTY Relay Service at 800-877-8339. Requests for closed captioning should be made at least 5 business days in advance of the event.

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