To advance the field of educational
research and to make it more rigorous in support of evidence-based education,
in November 2002 the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) was established. Through
its research initiatives and national research and development centers, IES
engages in research activities that will result in the provision of high
quality education for all children, improvement in student academic
achievement, reduction in the achievement gap between high-performing and
low-performing students, and increased access to and
opportunity for post-secondary education.
Currently, there has been an explosion of
the articles related to scientifically based standards. What constitutes
rigorous scientific methods for conducting educational research is an issue of
the most recent debates among researchers and legislators. The National
Research Council, the US Department of Education, the National Research Foundation
and other research and legislative organizations issued documents that intend
to discuss and clarify the nature of scientific inquiry in education to at best
support high quality educational research endeavors.
In summary, to be qualified as a scientifically
based research, investigation must
(i) employ systematic, empirical
methods that draw on observation or experiment;
(ii)
involve data analyses that are adequate to support the
general findings;
(iii)
rely on measurements or observational methods that
provide reliable data;
(iv)
make claims of causal relationships only in random
assignment experiments or other designs (to the extent such designs
substantially eliminate plausible competing explanations for the obtained
results);
(v)
ensure that studies and methods are presented in
sufficient detail and clarity to allow for replication or, at a minimum, to
offer the opportunity to build systematically on the findings of the research;
(vi)
obtain acceptance by a peer-reviewed journal or
approval by a panel of independent experts through a comparably rigorous,
objective, and scientific review; and
(vii)
use research designs and methods appropriate to the
research question posed.
By no means do the above standards
reject the qualitative methods employed to obtain reliable evidence and
knowledge. Nonetheless, we must be very clear that qualitative case studies alone
do not allow the ways of knowing which elements are crucial or relatively more
important than the others. In other words, those studies should not claim that
they identify causal effects, but rather provide description that can include
associations among variables.
Unfortunately, there is a common tendency to make invalid inference by
establishing a causal effect from simple correlations.
I believe we have to be aware of and give
a serious consideration to the current trend and demand for high quality
research. To inform you about a recent
discussion related to scientifically based research, I obtained permission from
the American Educational Research Association (AERA) to reprint an article
published in Educational Researcher, Jan/Feb 2003, Design Experiments in Educational Research, by Cobb, Confrey, diSessa, Lehrer, and Schaubl. This
feature article of the journal is focused on the goals and procedures of
conducting experiments to develop theories.
You may want to visit
the Educational Researcher on line and examine other articles
in its recent issue.
http://www.aera.net/pubs/er/eronline.htm.
Table of Contents
Articles
Design Experiments in Educational Research
Paul Cobb, Jere Confrey, Andrea diSessa, Richard Lehrer, and
Leona Schauble
reprinted from Educational Researcher
The Effects of Varying Retention Intervals of
Three and Eight Month, Within Block Scheduling, on High School Students’
Retention of Algebra II Concepts and Skills and Achievement in a Follow-On Precalculus Course
David. E. Arias,
A Study of Teachers’ Perceptions of Learning Organizations
in
Cheng-Hung Chen and Shu-Fang Chien, UML
Analysis of Student Outcomes: Evaluation of the
Donahue Institute
Educational
Resources
A Passion for Pi, or a
Student’s Voyage through Mathematical Discovery
Doug Ruby and Danielle Tarnow, UML
Chemistry Curriculum: Why Study Student
Alternative Conceptions?
Peggy LaBrosse,