Educational research

Educational research refers to the systematic collection and analysis of evidence and data related to the field of education. Research may involve a variety of methods and aspects of education including student learning, interaction, teaching methods, teacher training, and classroom dynamics.

Educational researchers generally agree that research should be rigorous and systematic. As a result, the value and quality of educational research has been questioned. Educational researchers may draw upon a variety of disciplines including psychology, economics, sociology, anthropology, history, and philosophy.

Qualitative research

Qualitative research uses data which is descriptive in nature. Tools that educational researchers use in collecting qualitative data include observations, interviews, document analysis, and analyzing participant products such as journals, diaries, images or blogs. This idea is well summarized by the work of Barrow in his text An introduction to philosophy of education:

Mixed method research can include:

Action research

Discipline-based

Discipline-based education research (DBER) is an interdisciplinary research enterprise that "investigates learning and teaching in a discipline [normally from the STEM fields] from a perspective that reflects the discipline's priorities, worldview, knowledge, and practices."

Examples include:

Astronomy education research (AER)
Biology education research (BER)
Chemistry education research (CER)
Computer science education research (CSER), also computing education research
Engineering education research (EER)
Geoscience education research (GER)
Mathematics education research (MER)
Physics education research (PER)

Educational research can also be organized by the subject or object of focus, as in school, teacher, student, etc., the relationship between actors such as student-teacher, teacher-principal, school-home, etc. by educational outcomes, such as motivation, learning of core subjects, learning of 21st century skills, attitudes, etc.

Results

In response to increased attention to the replicability of experimental findings in the sciences and medicine, in 2014, Educational Researcher published a review of the entire publication history of the 100 education journals with the highest five-year impact factors that found that out of 164,589 articles published only 221 articles (or 0.13 percent) were attempted replications of previous studies. Only 28.5 percent of the replication studies were direct replications rather than conceptual replications (i.e. usage of a different experimental method to test the same hypothesis). 48.2 percent of the replications were performed by the same research team as produced the original study, and when the same research team published the replication studies in the same journals, 88.7 percent of replications were successful while only 70.6 percent were successful when published in a different journal. When different researchers attempted to replicate the findings, only 54 percent of replications were successful.

, among more than 300 other psychology and medical journals, the British Journal of Developmental Psychology, the British Journal of Educational Psychology, the Canadian Journal of School Psychology, Exceptional Children, Frontiers in Education, the Gifted Child Quarterly, the Journal for the Education of the Gifted, the Journal of Advanced Academics, the Journal of Cognition and Development, the Journal of Educational Psychology, the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, JMIR Medical Education, the Journal of Numerical Cognition, the Journal of Research in Reading, Language Learning, Learning and Instruction, Mind, Brain, and Education, and Scientific Studies of Reading have adopted result-blind peer review (i.e. where studies are accepted not on the basis of their findings and after the studies are completed, but before the studies are conducted and upon the basis of the methodological rigor of their experimental designs and the theoretical justifications for their statistical analysis techniques before data collection or analysis is done) as part of an initiative organized by the Center for Open Science in response to concerns about publication bias and p-hacking. Early analysis of such reforms in psychology journals has estimated that 61 percent of result-blind studies have led to null results, in contrast to an estimated 5 to 20 percent in earlier psychological research.

Educational research

Qualitative research

Discipline-based

Results

See also

References

Further reading