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The Forum > Article Comments > Education research: a nebulous miasma of jumbled words and ideas > Comments

Education research: a nebulous miasma of jumbled words and ideas : Comments

By Peter Ridd, published 7/3/2005

Peter Ridd argues that we are not getting value for money from educational research.

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Dear Sams,

I congratulate you, a fellow Physicist, on stepping into the breach in the absence of Educational Researchers to list some important contributions of Educational Research. However the list is singularly unimpressive especially when one considers what influence all this has had on the learning of school kids. Certainly some points in the list will have had a small but useful influence on teaching and learning, but each of them hardly represent more than a few PhD dissertations.

I would estimate that there are 5 times as many educational academics as Physics academics at Universities. If we presume that 1/3rd of their time is to be devoted to research, and that this research seems rarely to give any benefit, this is poor value indeed.

Peter Ridd
Posted by Ridd, Wednesday, 9 March 2005 11:19:08 AM
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Peter's latest comment shows that Audrey was right in her reply to me! It does appear that he doesn't understand educational research. I have no evidence, but as a former biochemist now teaching marketing it appears to me that in social sciences developments are more incremental. In the hard sciences it's easier to get those obvious landmarks, the big bangs, huge bits of equipment, machines that go "ping" etc that politicians and other simple folk can stand in front of and look important. But I look at my children's primary school education here in Victoria and compare it what I remember of my own. It's quite astonishingly better; indeed one of the more subtle tasks junior primary school teachers have here is to gently educate the parents about the improvements in educational practice over a generation.

I really want to go back to the dumbing down argument though. Is there objective evidence of this? Introducing "lower level courses" is probably an inevitable consequence of letting more students in to higher education. Have the standards at entry and at graduation of the best students - the ones who would have gone to university in the old days - dropped?
Posted by Colin, Wednesday, 9 March 2005 11:47:29 AM
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Ah, here we get to the nub of the argument! It's about the value of educational research compared to physics. It think Peter's statement "a small, but useful influence", compared to Colin's "astonishingly better" just about sums up Peter's prejudice (now for Peter to prove his point, he would have to do some educational research!). Peter is obviously mightily impressed with the value of physics over educational research - not that surprising given that it's his field.

Aside from Peter's bias, he makes an error when he judges the value of he research by how well it has been applied. It's my observation from first hand experience that there is considerable resistance to introducing new teaching ideas and techniques in various technical faculties - resistance by the educators themselves! Are they to remain blameless?

While we're at it, let's also look at the effectiveness of the *application* of physics and other sciences:

1. less than half of the world have access to a basic telephone
2. the world came close to being annihilated by nuclear war (it's still not that safe if you look at the current stockpiles of weapons)
3. global warming is increasingly likely to cause massive global environmental collapse
4. hundreds of thousands die every year from preventable illness
etc. etc.

Should we give the scientists an 'F' for research performance, based on its poor application? No? To digress a little from the debate, that's actually an interesting question: Peter sums up in his article when he asks ed researchers to "Justify [their] existence". I suggest all academics who are not working on solving problems such as the above might like to reflect on their role in society. When it comes to social responsibility, in many cases I'd lobby for the educational researchers any day ... I guess that's why I'm an ex-physicist.

Sure there are some time wasters in educational research, but show me any field where there aren't any.
Posted by Sams, Wednesday, 9 March 2005 2:46:43 PM
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educational research is easier to understand once you have been inducted into the jargon.

the gulf between theory and practice in many of the social sciences is one of the reasons they are so poorly regarded. they don't make much of an effort to be understandable. in the sciences, the link between theory and practice is often easier to see (if not understand).

i have tertiary education in biology, computer science, law, and education. theory in the first three was quite concrete in its' relevance and application (until i got into aspects of social science theory in law).

educational research would benefit from less obtuse and obscure jargon - and a real effort to relate itself to practical problems. if lawyers can write complex contracts and legislation in 'plain english', i can't see what's so hard for social scientists to do the same.
Posted by maelorin, Friday, 11 March 2005 3:08:04 PM
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The inability to perform calculations goes hand-in-hand with the inability to parse a sentence or write in a coherent manner. Herein, today, as a Business Studies lecturer, I regularly come across post-graduate assignment paragraphing and sentence structuring, which would have recieved a stern remark from my fifth class primary school teacher in 1963.

I think the problem goes way back to the days, when it was held by Educationalists that it is more inportant students freely express themselves, than to be held back with little things, like language and grammar. Next, we had Dawkins merging the CAEs and universities. Lastly, we have Nelson forcing Vice Chancellors with no real world business experience into commercialising and dumbing-down education. On this last point, perhaps, Dr Nelson will ultimately achieve more sustained and wider spread harm to Australia than did the Japanese bombing of Darwin.

Today, what does B.A., B.Bus. or a B.Sc. mean? The student with a Tertiary Entrance Rank of 95 slaved burning the midnight oil night after night to receive a Credit grade? More likely, a student, who received a TER of 70, paraphased other people's work, cut and pasted from the Internet, and is now teaching our children.

There has been some good research methodologies developed in Education discipline in the United States with regards to Hierarchical Linear Modelling. Herein, dependent variables can be tiered in very efficacious ways
Posted by Oliver, Friday, 18 March 2005 8:49:49 PM
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Well Peter,nothings changed since I was a teacher in the 1980's.You can't have specific critera and objectives that can be measured and thus some one becomes accountable in terms of specific standards!Now don't rock the boat.If you want to progress,learn the jargon,the rules and find a catchy new concept that can't be quantified in terms of your own undefinable criteria.Hey presto ,promotion!

The left wing Soft Option Brigade[SOBS]have been in charge of education for a long time influencing both our children,politics and our society.We are seeing the results today,in terms of social, moral and educational disintergration.
Posted by Arjay, Saturday, 19 March 2005 9:03:02 PM
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