We all learned the scientific method in the fifth grade, so we all think we understand science. (That's why people with no scientific credentials whatsoever feel free to go online and disagree with experienced experts.) Here's the problem, what you learned in elementary school was, by necessity, oversimplified. The experiments you did for your middle and high school science fair did not give you any sense of what it means to run a clinical trial or perform a longitudinal study. It did not give you an understanding of how methodology or sample size influences the credibility of conclusions. This is where educators find themselves in a time where we would like to apply good science but perhaps don't understand what that means. The following is just some advice (i.e. meddling) from a brain research enthusiast with a science education background.
1. Good science takes time. - I have been bothered in the past year to see how many seminars are being offered (some as early as April 2020) on "best practices in distance learning." We haven't been doing distance long enough for there to be valid scientific research in this area. The people putting on these seminars are presenting the same presentation they have been doing for years, throwing "in distance learning" onto the title, and using the desperation of educators to push the agenda they've had for years. That is not only poor science; it is poor ethics. We should stop rewarding them for it. It would take more than one year of data to draw any kind of meaningful conclusion. Most scientifically valid education research tracks student performance for several years, and the best ones track the same group throughout their entire educational career. When you are looking for a valid source, look to see how long the participants in the study were tracked. The longer, the better.
2. Good science involves large numbers. - When I teach scientific validity to my 8th-grade students, I start with two important things, how to mitigate the impact of bias and how to recognize the difference between anecdotal evidence and experimentation. Remember when we got chain emails with a story about someone's aunt being fatally ill from drinking Diet Coke and encouraging you to pass it along to ten other people? You know nothing about the aunt's medical history or life habits, but you are supposed to boycott an industry and encourage your friends to do so. There is still a widespread belief that MSG is bad for you, and that started with a prank letter to a medical journal. I was listening to the radio one day when a study was being discussed, and I was fairly interested in the result until they said the sample size was 12 people. I might as well just ask around amongst my friends and call it a study. When you are looking at research, the first thing you should look for is the sample size. It will look like this: n = 1000. That is telling you how many subjects the study had. The bigger the number, the more valid the result.
3. Credentials matter. - In recent years, we have come to believe that my ignorance is as valid as your expertise because they are side by side on social media. I have watched videos online made by college students and seen educators respond as though it is credible because it happens to agree with what they already think. I have also watched educators argue with serious, experienced researchers because they couldn't let go of learning styles and didn't want to take the time to understand the difference between learning styles and dual coding. Take the time to seek out legitimate researchers, not just watch a youtube video from the hottest edu-celebrity, even if he is dressed like a pirate (strike that, especially if he is dressed like a pirate). One place to start is with John Hattie (although he is often misinterpreted and misused in the ways I addressed last week). Another is Barbara Oakley because while she is not a researcher herself, she is excellent at communicating the research of others and cites credible sources. Dr. David Rose is excellent if you are willing and able to digest a lot of data. Pooja Agarwal is very practical in application. When you find good people, allow them to recommend other good people.
4. Don't just adopt. Adapt. - Because education matters so much, we want a silver bullet that will work in every class. Here's the problem. Your classroom is different from mine. Your discipline has different constraints than mine. Your students may come from a different socio-economic condition than mine. The ages of your students are different from mine. Your comfort level with using certain tools is different from mine. Science, when done well, is very narrowly drawn. An experiment has exactly one independent variable, and the researcher has tight control over the conditions and context. They even get to choose their participants. The conclusions they draw are a result of that level of control. In your classroom, you have some control over your conditions, but you have none over the background of your students or which students you have. Does this mean we cannot apply scientific research to our classrooms? Of course not. It means we must adapt research to our context, not fully adopt what comes out of the lab. The best analogy I have heard came from Dr. David B. Daniel, PhD. He said educational research done in the lab is like growing a plant in a greenhouse. You get to test one particular growth method while keeping the temperature, moisture level, light level, etc. constant. Applying educational research in your classroom, he says, is more like growing a plant in your yard. You can water, but you can't control the amount of rain or sun. Animals may come along and attempt to eat your plant or poop seeds into the system. Does it mean the growth method you used in the greenhouse is no longer useful? No. It means you may not see the exact same results, and you may need to adapt it to your conditions.
It takes effort, but I encourage you, as an educator, to educate yourself. Find credible researchers with good methodology, and then adapt their methods to your classroom. Some of them will be, surprisingly, tried and true methods you have been using for years. You will just get to do them with more confidence, knowing you are backed by good science. Some of them will contradict things you have thought were valuable. For example, did you know that highlighting what you read has a negative impact on your ability to retain the information? Those will enable you to change the advice you give to your students so that you can provide them with better support. Find a couple of books you can read this summer or begin following a researcher's blog next weekend. Start adapting their findings to your garden, and you will find that you are generating good results.
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