Is Good Educational Research an Oxymoron?

As I struggled in a statistics class to learn the language of statistics I came to appreciate the value of statistics and learned that if used properly it can provide us with very useful information when making decisions.

Also, the rigor professors required when writing papers for my doctorate classes has given me an inkling of the time, energy, and money researchers invest in order to help us make wise educational decisions.

Therefore, I am saddened when people discount what statistics and research reveal and make accusations that they are twisted to support one's own point of view. Unfortunately, that does happen, but that would be shoddy research that should be rejected. Yet, if in this process all research is rejected, much excellent scholarly research will be rejected that could benefit learners.

Not only does discounting scholarly research cause us to miss out on some valuable information, it also causes us (and our learners!) to lose too much precious time while we are busy reinventing the wheel.

A problem that we face concerning excellent scholarly research is that we have considerable evidence that those who need to read the results of these studies rarely see them or if they do, they don't heed them. In other words, the bulk of the research results never makes it to the classroom. When practitioners don't attend research conferences and researchers don't attend conferences for practitioners, a disconnect is perpetuated that must not be allowed to exist. The disconnect is exacerbated by the fact that researchers most often only publish their findings in educational journals that a high percentage of practitioners seldom read.

As long as educators, policy makers, and the general community regard good educational research as an oxymoron and use that as an excuse to not give credence or heed to the findings of excellent scholarly research, “quick fixes” and “silver bullets” with no long term benefits for student achievement will continue to be implemented.

Until this disconnect challenge is addressed and resolved we will continually be spinning our wheels and our learners will not be receiving the best education they need and deserve.