I am in my office preparing for my grad class tomorrow evening. I am reading a 2003 paper by Burkhardt & Schoenfeld that offers suggestions for improving educational research and the difficulty of influencing educational practice via resesarch. It is assigned reading for the students in my class. At the same time, I am running a Twitter feed on my computer and most of the comments coming in are from the Educon conference. Just consider me one of those multi-taskers. It is an amazing contrast – I wish I could capture this comparison as an object lesson and bring it to class.
From Burkhardt & Schoenfeld (citing the 2002-2007 strategic plan of the Department of Education):
Unlike medicine, agriculture, and industrial production, the field of education operates largely on the basis of ideology and professional consensus. As such, it is subject to fads and is incapable of the cumulative progress that follows from the application of the scientific method and from the systematic collection and use of objective information in policy making. (p. 48)
From Twitter:
How do we get rid of the tests? How do we collect authentic data with teachers who don’t know what it is? Parents love their children.
Asking that those in an argument offer evidence is one of those tests of critical thinking used to evaluate credibility and being willing to examine data and the responsible methodology is one way to avoid ideology.
Those of us who are educators (and parents) ask for data in order to evaluate your proposals. Requesting evidence in support of recommendations is about understanding the history of our discipline and owning up to the reality that time and time again kids ended up being exposed to unproductive ideas that were later rejected. Requesting evidence is simply prudent and complying with such requests is evidence of true commitment.
