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Problems with Educational Research

As a recent uni graduate, I got to see a fair bit of the “Educational research” that has been quoted in recent times and referred to in the PLUTO site.  Some of these problems I will list below:

        •       Sample sizes – I even saw one paper that looked at the academic performance of one student!  Try doing a drug test on a sample size this big and see how the regulators react.

        •       Double blind testing.  This is seen as the benchmark for research, but when you are talking about teaching methods, this is just not possible.  Can anyone really tell me that when they are testing a new method of teaching, they will not put a bit more effort in…

        •       Results.  The current surveys in maths show that WA students ability, particularly in primary schools has declined since the introduction of the frameworks.  The runs are on the board here.

        •       Incentive – Teaching at (an independent girls school), I saw how self motivated these students from high-socioeconomic backgrounds are.  Unfortunately, not all students value knowledge for its own sake, as their parents also did not value knowledge for its own sake.  But for some of these males, the value of competition is important.  If we remove the competition between students in the same class, we remove a good portion of these students motivation.  Just because they are poor does not mean that they can’t achieve.

        •       New FMRI research into how the brain actually works has shown that using working memory and training it reverses ADHD. 

        •       Training and repetition are not only frowned on, but actively discouraged under OBE by the current minister.  She has been quoted in Hansard as saying that “Rote learning is dead in WA”.  Can you remember your times tables, and how did you learn them.  Appreciating that 6x7 = 42 does not mean you can recall this when needed.

Until these problems with the research can be solved, I will not be accepting of a system founded by a sociologist to educate our students in a manner that is contrary to thousands of years of experience.

Ian Middleton