Remember? On the EPSY 5220 final exam, you were asked what evidence you might value or seek to support your evaluation of the usefulness of XR technologies. Remember all the way back to December? At the time, many of you
felt “research” of this type involved Qualitative (Qual) research like t
alking to stakeholders (like parents, students, admin, etc) to ask about their opinions of how it was working. Opinions. Hmmm. Are those the best source of data? How stable or reli
able are opinions (do they change day to day, week to week?) How valid are opinions? (do they fully reflect an objective reality or facts of what is happening?). Many of you put the highest value on talking to other teachers or students for their self-reported opinions on the benefits and pitfalls of VR. For local and immediate decision making, many of you felt this was the best, easiest, and quickest source for “proof” that technology works, Right?
EPSY 5601 is a 3-step program. 1) Stop using the term “prove.” No experiment or set of experiments ever proves anything. Science is about seeking evidence to Disprove our hypotheses. Failing to find such disproof does NOT prove anything– it simply provides additional supporting evidence that we don’t know anything any better… yet. This logic is sometimes lost on most casual viewers of the sciences. But it is CRITICAL to understand, and you can start by simply substituting the word “evidence” for “proof.” Our work is to seek supporting evidence that technology enhances classroom learning. Got it?
2) Understand that Qual research, carefully done, is the main and essential part of doing science. It is always our first step. We must observe and listen carefully. Qual research is hypothesis-generating.
3) And then understand that Quant research, carefully done, is a follow-up to Qual. We have to find ways to control some of the many variables of real life that can “confound” our ideas that one thing “causes” another. Quant research is hypothesis-testing.
This semester, we’d like you to consider some additional sources of information, to add to qualitative interviews, informal talks, and shared opinions. We hope to have you focus on these key issues of how solid information is (reliability and validity), and on how your ideas of “research” might expand to get more information, equally quickly and easily, on which to make instructional decisions. This is not to say asking others their opinions is not valuable… it is! Our hope is that you may find information gleaned from other qualitative methods and some quantitative methods equally of value.
Do you recall hearing about Donald Schön’s idea of reflective teaching practice? He wrote of reflection “in action” and reflection “on action,” suggesting teachers must learn from their teaching experiences. This disturbed some who valued University research, because it suggested that traditional wisdom from peer reviewed journals using scientific research methods (“technical rationality”) was, perhaps, less valuable in teacher education than in other fields like school nursing or school psychology. Those of us in EPSY were saying, “What’s up with that?”!! I think the answer is that even Schön did not want to dismiss EPSY research (Kinsella 2007), but only challenge those doing it to move toward more applied, dare I say “Design-based” research. Hopefully you heard this term before, as 2 Summers looks to push this idea from ProSem in summer 1 to Capstone in summer 2.
While this is likely not news to you, perhaps the key thing this course has to add is how teachers and University research need each other and must work together and become co-researchers. There is even a new label for this this: Learning Sciences– describing how laboratory research needs to move out into the field to become more valuable and responsive, particularly with regard to the rapidly changing landscape of new tech devices and apps. Researchers who are starting to call themselves learning scientists start with teachers’ problems of practice (big issues that must be resolved) and then proceed to apply their theories and test them in authentic settings. For learning sciences to be a “thing,” teachers must trust them and invite them in, because only teachers have access to the problems and the settings that learning sciences want to address.
Let’s start our reading in the TopHat textbook. If you have not done so already, view starter guide on to how to access and use the TopHat online Text resources.
Read Chapter 1 What is Science? in your TopHat text. Note the added distinction between empirical research and Googling for online reviews and opinions. Also consider Stoke’s (1997) book on basic science and the advances toward a more dialogical understanding of scientific research that is not a linear connection from basic research to applied research, but embraces the collaboration of teacher and learning scientists.
Big Idea:
The Scientific research method is one way to help guide important decisions. It is a value system that one must choose to adopt. It is both a process and a way of thinking. Many people do not believe in the scientific method and prefer more humanistic approaches to decision making, like the more impassioned plea or the animated case for something should win. Other people adopt a perspective that suggests science is useful for some types of problems and not others. And when the results of the scientific method conflict with personal feelings, beliefs, and experiences, scientific results can simply be rejected (as Piaget suggested, this is a matter of assimilating any new (even conflicting) information into our prior understandings (or schemas)). The big idea of this module is for you to reflect on your own beliefs about the value of research, and to consider whether you value it above other types of evidence when, especially when “it doesn’t seem right.”
Other Readings:
Almost no educational research is ever replicated (2014 Inside Higher Ed)
Scientific “fact checkers” find only 39 of 100 studies replicated (2015 Washington Post)
