| Overview
It
is not necessary for all educators to be highly knowledgeable
about and capable of conducting scientifically based
research (SBR). It is necessary, however, for all educators
to understand what SBR is and what rigorous, high-quality
research looks like.
Rigorous
research is essential for determining the effectiveness
of programs, practices, and products for educating students.
In recent years, increasing numbers of education policymakers
and educators have recognized the critical need for
replacing the unproven in education with a new body
of practices and products that are based on and validated
by what is now commonly called "gold standard"
research” or "scientifically based research."
The "gold standard" for research is considered
to be randomized field trials. That is, when interventions
are implemented in schools, either the participating
students, participating classrooms, or participating
schools must be randomly assigned to either a treatment
or a control/comparison group.
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Conducting
true randomized field trials can be extremely difficult, logistically
and practically, and these challenges have often seemed too
great for educational researchers. Coupled with a pressing
need for immediate answers for difficult, seemingly intractable,
school problems, these challenges have led to the proliferation
of alluring and highly promoted but generally unvalidated
commercial products and services.
Many
times, the quality of research in education is less than rigorous.
Very often the "research studies" that are used
to validate claims of effectiveness are not well designed
or are intended to promote a product. Consequently, a glut
of unproven and too often ineffective practices has overwhelmed
the education community. The Institute of Education Sciences
(IES) of the U.S. Department of Education has adopted the
mission of raising the standard of educational research so
that unfounded claims may be questioned.
In
addition to the information about scientifically based research
and judging the quality of research, the following are also
included in this topic area:
- The
definition of scientifically based research found in the
No Child Left Behind Act.
- A discussion
of SBR by Presentation by Grover Whitehurst, Director, Institute
of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education.
- A link
to the book Scientific Research in Education written
by the Committee on Scientific Principles for Education
Research and published by the National Research Council.
- A link
to the What
Works Clearinghouse, which gathers studies of the effectiveness
of educational interventions (programs, products, practices,
and policies) and reviews the studies that have the strongest
design. WWC then reports on the strengths and weaknesses
of those studies against the WWC Evidence Standards so that
visitors to the site learn what the best scientific evidence
has to say.
What is Scientifically
Based Research?
The
products and practices you consider and the information in
publications that you consult should have been validated through
studies designed to meet basic standards of research quality.
There are two major categories of research studies used to
validate educational products and practices: experimental
and descriptive. Any research design in either of these categories
may be appropriate to validate products and practices depending
on the research question as long as the study has a strong
research design and is implemented according to generally-accepted
principles for research quality. As you search for educational
products and practices to help you improve your schools, you
will want to know whether the ones you find have been validated
using the principles of scientifically based research (SBR).
In this section, we briefly answer the question, “What
is Scientifically-Based Research?” and provide some
descriptions of study designs that are used.
Criteria for Judging
the Quality of Research
In order to determine whether
to accept claims made that research has validated the effectiveness
of certain products and practices, it is necessary to understand
the quality of the design and how the research was conducted.
Additional articles and links on judging research quality
are also presented at this site.
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