On 7 Apr 2005 at 11:48, Richard Hake wrote (in response to my puzzlement that
Douglas Carnine could, by any stretch of the imagination, be considered "anti-
research"):
> I disagree. I think Shoenfeld makes a good case that Carnine played a
> leading role in undermining math instruction in California. And that
> Carnine is "anti-research" is made abundantly clear by Carnine (2000)
> himself. He extols the notoriously inept [Lagemann (2000), Cohen
> (1970),] Project Follow Through, and discounts almost all other
> education research because it fails to employ the double-blind
> randomized design of some medical research.
OK, it's becoming clear if surreal. What Richard means when he calls someone
"anti-research" is that the individual so disparaged is in favour of the
double-blind
randomized research design. This must be the most unusual use of the term "anti-
research" I've come across, so my initial confusion is understandable. As
someone
who believes that the double-blind randomized trial is God's gift to science
(but see
my contributions to the thread on divine intervention in medical trials) I find
this
terminology incomprehensible and bizarre. Clearly I misunderstood the
implication
of the accusation that Carnine was "anti-research".
>
> Except for Carnine, even the Randomized Control Trial (RCT) champions
> who have convinced the U.S. Dept. of Education that RCT's are the
> "gold standard" of education research realize that double-blind
> trials in education are virtually impossible. For example, any
> instructor who is oblivious of whether s(he) is using pill "A"
> ("interactive-engagement") or pill "B" (passive-student lectures)
> could not, in my opinion, be trusted to administer either pill
> effectively.
>
Certainly, it's more difficult to arrange such a trial in education, or for
that matter, in
psychology in general. But it remains an ideal that can and should be
approximated
if one wants to have confidence in the conclusions. For example, randomization
is
critical to ensure that the abilities of the students don't systematically
differ prior to
treatment. But it would be hopelessly impractical to randomize educational
treatments to different students in the same classroom. Instead, classrooms can
be
randomized to receive different treatments, and the unit datum then becomes the
success of the classroom, not the individual student. That's not so hard to do.
As for double-blind, I agree that blinding in the strict drug sense--that
neither
teacher nor student knows which treatment has been received--is impossible to
achieve and pointless in any case. Who cares whether the students or the
teachers
know which treatment they're receiving or giving? But what is important is
that
those who do the _evaluation_ of the success of the treatments do their
evaluation
blindly, which means independently, without knowledge of which treatment has
been applied. Only then can we be certain that the expectations and biases of
the
evaluators haven't contaminated their assessment. Again, that's not so hard to
do.
Now, it's been years since I looked at any such educational evaluations. But if
Carnine and his colleagues have carried out research along those lines, as they
probably have, and if those results show the superiority of the Direct
Instruction
method, as it probably does, then, boy! would I be impressed. And I guess,
using
Richard's terminology, you'd have to call me anti-research too.
>
> Furthermore, the USDE's RCT gold standard is considered problematic
> by a wide array of scholars. Taking issue with the RCT gold standard
> are philosophers Dennis Phillips [Shavelson, Phillips, Towne, & Feuer
> (2003)] and Michael Scrivin (2004); mathematicians Burkhardt &
> Schoenfeld (2003); engineer Woodie Flowers [Zaritsky, Kelly, Flowers,
> Rogers, Patrick (2003)]; and physicist Andre deSessa [Cobb, Confey,
> diSessa, Lehrer, & Schauble (2003)].
>
> In addition, the following organizations oppose the RCT gold standard:
>
> (a) American Evaluation Association (AEA)
> <http://www.eval.org/doestatement.htm>,
>
> (b) American Education Research Association (AERA)
> <http://www.eval.org/doeaera.htm>, and
>
> (c) National Education Association
> <http://www.eval.org/doe.nearesponse.pdf> (88 kB).
Of course, science isn't a democracy. Remember Einstein's famous quip when told
of the publication in Nazi Germany of a pamphlet against his work titled "100
Authors Against Einstein" (presumably because his theory was "Jewish science")?
He said, "If I were wrong, one would be enough".
[see http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/biography/Einstein.html]
> > > REFERENCES
> Black, S. "Re: Efficient teaching methods," TIPS post of 07 Apr 2005 >
> 10:44:39-
0500. online at > <http://acsun.frostburg.edu/cgi-
bin/lyris.pl?sub=342238&id=271381206>
.[One way to locate this message on the primitive TIPS archive is to search
for
"efficient" (without the quotes) in the "entire message."]
As Bill Southerly, our listowner, has informed me, the archive is broke and
there
isn't money to fix it. A better place to go to retrieve TIPS stuff is the
_Mail Archive_
at
http://www.mail-archive.com/tips%40acsun.frostburg.edu/
Stephen (just call me anti-research)
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Stephen L. Black, Ph.D. tel: (819) 822-9600 ext 2470
Department of Psychology fax:(819) 822-9661
Bishop's University e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Lennoxville, QC J1M 1Z7
Canada
Dept web page at http://www.ubishops.ca/ccc/div/soc/psy
TIPS discussion list for psychology teachers at
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