This week’s “Question Of The Week” at my Education Week Teacher blog relates to how we can tell the difference between good and bad education research. As a supplement to next week’s response on that issue, I wanted to bring together some helpful resources that might be understandable to other teachers and me.
You might also be interested in these related “The Best…” lists:
The Best Places To Get Reliable, Valid, Accessible & Useful Education Data
The Best Posts & Articles To Learn About “Fundamental Attribution Error” & Schools
Here are my choices for The Best Resources For Understanding How To Interpret Education Research:
A primer on navigating education claims by Paul Thomas.
Matthew Di Carlo at the Shanker Blog has written quite a few good posts on the topic:
In Research, What Does A “Significant Effect” Mean?
Revisiting The CREDO Charter School Analysis
Our Annual Testing Data Charade
The Education Reporter’s Dilemma
A Policymaker’s Primer on Education Research: How to Understand, Evaluate and Use It is from the Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning (McREL). Here’s a non-PDF version.
School Finance 101 often does great data analysis. Bruce Baker’s posts there, though, tend to be a little more challenging to the layperson, but it’s still definitely a must-visit blog.
Here’s a related post:
Hey, Researchers and Policymakers: Pay Attention to the Questions Teachers Ask is by Larry Cuban.
What Counts as a Big Effect? (I) is by Aaron Pallas. I’m adding it to The Best Resources For Understanding How To Interpret Education Research. Thanks to Scott McLeod for the tip, who also wrote a related post.
Why “Evidence-Based” Education Fails is by Paul Thomas.
How to Judge if Research is Trustworthy is by Audrey Watters.
The “Journal of Errology” has a very funny post titled What it means when it says …. Here’s a sample:
“It has long been known” means “I didn’t look up the original reference”
“It is believed that” means “I think”
“It is generally believed that” means “A couple of others think so, too”
Value-Added Versus Observations, Part One: Reliability is from The Shanker Blog.
Additional suggestions are welcome.
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You might also want to explore the 800 other “The Best…” lists I’ve compiled.
