What is most amusing about Peter's article is that he is a classic example of the type of teacher that the mentioned ARC project is trying to reach. How can one lambast the research work of another when they quite clearly have no understanding of what they are critiquing! I'm not doing research in education - in the sciences actually - but I can still work out that the ARC project Peter has used as the almighty proof that all education research is useless, is aimed at helping a teacher/lecturer to resolve a conflicting personal ideology with what they're actually being asked to teach. Fairly important I would have thought. How does one's religious beliefs for example, allow them to teach sex education and not feel compromised. Not all education is maths and physics. Peter, being the empiricist that he is however, probably still thinks the earth is flat and that no age-old theory need ever be questioned. And all those high-minded education academics .. Peter must HATE that they get to to tell him how to be a more exciting lecturer. Practice the art of reflection Peter...

Audrey's ad hominem attack is not particularly helpful. What about addressing the assertion that standards have undoubtedly dropped in an area that Peter Ridd clearly is qualified to talk about, his core research and teaching area of maths and physics? Is there objective evidence to support this assertion?

Audrey,

Thanks for the translation of the research definition. If that's what the project is about, it sems fine. However, I went back to try to match your translation to the original and I still have a fair bit of difficulty doing so. It seems to me that the project could be a lot more general than yor interpretation.

I think that no discipline, whether physics, education, cosmology or anything else does itself much of a favour when it buries itself completely in its own language. I accept that physicists will talk in equations when they are discussing the more complex areas of their field with other physicists, and educators will also make use of a lot of concepts well known in their field to simplify discussion amongst themseleves. However, when addressing the wider community, I think all disciplines have the obligation to talk the language of that community - to do anything else is, amongst other things, impolite. It invites a negative reaction and usually gets it.
Science is actually well served at the moment with writers and journalists who understand the science and can explain it in general terms to those who are not experts. Fields like education need to do the same thing. If they are, can you point out to us where we can get ready access to that type of explanation?

The key point in this piece is "The current debate on literacy is evidence that it is difficult to tell if current educational theory has improved anything."

Consider the current debate at the political level and in the general media about economics and infrastructure provision/skill shortages, immigration and asylum seekers and border protection and mandatory detention, criminology and prisons, welfare and homeless people, transport and health. Indeed most areas. Evidence as to whether research assists public policy is not to be found in such places.

That a scientist at a university, a domain where research on leadership and management and organizational reform, on history and the development of ideas is similarly lacking from public debate, should question the value of educational research represents a level of ignorance that ought not to be allowed to go unchallenged in the strongest possible terms.

The common theme is that the findings of quality research in any area seem to take years to get through to the decisions made by governments and even major organizations, including education departments.

There is substantial very high quality research in education in Australia and in the United States where in particular the most horrendous decisions are being made.

Spend a bit of time doing research on it Peter. Use a good search engine! Think about how public policy is developed. Try reading Don Watson's "Confessions of a Bleeding Heart" or the new book on James Galbraith to see what happens at the political level and how available knowledge is considered.

When you have done that Peter and cried into your drink every bloody evening at the shocking ignorance of those who seem to have most influence and the outrageous results that ignorance imposes on every one of us in every aspect of our lives, then have another go at an opinion!

By the way technology has not improved every aspect of how we live our lives. Think about what is reported every week about the modern workplace and stress on ordinary people.

I did a PhD in physics and also later a graduate certificate in higher education, although I became a software engineer in between times. Whilst I felt that the course could have been more succinct, I can say that it was extremely rewarding not just for educating in better ways, but also recognising what it means to facilitate learning in many different ways and situations --- and not just within universities. During the course, I picked up some understanding of the jargon and the research behind it. Like most areas, the was some really good research, and also quite a lot of time wasters writing mundane material - yes, this happens in physics too.

Let's do the same search on the ARC website, but this time for "physics":

"Despite the importance of a weakly interacting Fermi gas to areas as diverse as stellar evolution, conduction in metals, and the nuclear shell model, its realisation has eluded us. With the new cooling techniques developed for the study of Bose-Einstein condensates, its realisation now appears possible. We aim to produce, and study the first dilute, weakly interacting Fermi gas by cooling a cloud of potassium to temperatures less than one millionth of a degree above absolute zero. This step, fascinating in itself, is the first on the path to cooling a dilute Fermi gas to a new superfluid state."

Did you all understand that? If not, should we make Peter Ridd's assumption that the research is not "value for money" because it is "incomprehensible"? The problems posed by academic language, and in particular jargon, are immense when it comes to penetrating other fields of study. However, writing the above abstract in laypersons terms and staying within a reasonable word limit, *and* making it useful to other academics, would also be impossible. I whish there was an easy solution, but as far as I know, there isn't.

Peter says "Perhaps this is done to make the “research” look more impressive." Perhaps Peter thinks that only 'real' research such as physics is allows to have jargon terms.

I'm not so sure Colin, that your defense of Peter is accurate ... he appears to be attacking research in Education, not research and education in physics. Though loosely cloaked, his argument is an attack on another research discipline which Peter can't seem to want to or bother to comprehend. Which sort of leads to Alexm's comment, which I completely agree with - about the exclusive nature of conversations and terms in a lot of academic research - except that I read the ARC grant text again and still found it easy to comprehend if I used my brain a bit. Yes, I had to look up 'post-structural' in the dictionary but all the other key words are common in our language, like reflective, practice, conflicting ideology. And science is no holy cow of communication, it also suffers heavily from exclusionary and down-right boring language. It's all so post-structuralist really ...

Peter claims: The current debate on literacy is evidence that it is difficult to tell if current educational theory has improved anything. From my perspective as a university lecturer, it is certain that the standard of mathematics of our first year students has gone down.

The latter point is of the sort of emotive, gut-level (i.e. non-scientific) diatribe we get from Minister Nelson: e.g. "A mother of a child said to me that her son . . ."

On the other hand, the systematic empirical evidence that is quantitatively summarized says: The (publicly available) international comparisons of educational achievement (PISA) tell that Australian children (almost) invariably do well on these tests. And the appendices to the report have enough formulae to keep any budding physicist busy.

Both Minister Nelson and Dr Ridd studiously avoid this sort of educational research information when composing their attacks - adding more heat but no light to the debate.

Audrey, I suspect you enjoyed writing "[I] still found it easy to comprehend if I used my brain a bit. Yes, I had to look up 'post-structural' in the dictionary..."

I had no idea either, so I too took a look.

"Post-structuralism contests the concept of 'man' as developed by enlightenment thought and idealist philosophy. Rather than holding as in the enlightenment view that 'individuals', are sacred, separate and intact, their minds the only true realm of meaning and value, their rights individual and inalienable, their value and nature rooted in a universal and transhistorical essence -- a metaphysical being, in short -- the post-structural view holds that persons are culturally and discursively structured, created in interaction as situated, symbolic beings. The common term for a person so conceived is a 'subject'"

But I'm not too concerned with the precise meaning - indeed, I doubt there is agreement on one - but with the implications of the rest of the project description.

Are we not in debating territory here, rather than in proper research?

An objective is set. "It seeks to discover if, when and how the recognition of contradictory practices driven by conflicting ideologies can contribute to quality teaching".

Then we read "the findings of the study will provide specific directions for teachers, teacher educators and other professionals on how reflective practice informed by post-structural analyses can contribute to a different, more socially aware understanding of teachers' work."

There is a disconnect here.

It is entirely possible to arrive at valid findings without any reference to the objective. Test that assertion by providing a negative response to the "if" part. "We find that the contradictory practices do not in fact contribute to quality teaching". What would be the impact of this discovery on the "specific directions"?

Because the findings adduce a general from a specific, the only possible value of the entire exercise can be in the debate itself. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing, but it wouldn't pass muster under the Trades Description Act. Doubt the physics guys would buy into the process either.

I am a training manager. Today I spent two hours in a meeting discussing the application of Standard 7 of the AQTF/ATMR. I then wrote a report on a training analysis in which the people who prepared the analysis had completely forgotten the concept of Competency Training, which is to link training to the workplace requirement, but instead had added a considerable amount of superfluous training designed, I have no doubt, to bolster a pay case for the group of workers concerned. I wrote reports, I spoke to trainers, I prepared statistics and at the end of the day I reached for whatever digest of educational and training research had reached my in tray. Thirty seconds later, it was back in my in-tray and I returned to more mundane matters to do with managing the training of my organisation—I had no energy or inclination even to try to penetrate the flapdoodle (lovely word thank you Mark Twain) of which the booklet of research seemed to mostly consist.

Why is this so? I try to spare half an hour during lunch to look at Arts and Letters, and always find something of interest. I come from a technology background and technical research can absorb me for hours but is it me ....I suppose it must be, but life is far far too short to spend time on current educational research, maybe if researchers learnt how to use bullet points and could condense their work into a few points using active voice.

By the way the Atom bomb--before the bomb millions dead, World War 1 and World War 2, after the bomb, thousands, yes regrettable, but no repeat of the mass slaughter of the first two world wars. Maybe science should not be so reticent about the bomb

Thanks for all the Interest. Something that strikes me about the general comments that have been made is that nobody has come up with a list of, perhaps, 10 great breakthroughs in Educational Research of the last 100 years. My basic argument is that there has been spectacularly little progress in this time. None of you seem to disagree.

On the subject of problems that I see with first year Maths Science and Engineering students. Yes it is anecdotal. Perhaps one of our educational researchers could pick this up. However, do not think I am seeing the past with rose coloured glasses. We have diluted our first year Maths course twice in the last 10 years and also introduced an even lower level course. Other Universities have done the same.

The PISA survey may be of some comfort to some of you but the TIMMS survey is not. And they both finish at grade 8. There are 4 more years of damage to be inflicted on the kids before I see them. And anyway, why is that Singapore so comprehensively beats us in these surveys?

Cheer
Peter Ridd

I'm wary that Peter is trying to draw this debate into what constitutes 'real' research. Educational research doesn't have the the hard factual laws like physics does - it's much harder to find a conclusive result, so the concept of a side-by-side comparison of "great breakthroughs" between educational research and physics does not sit well. Everyone has different ideas on how education should be done, but educational research tries to bring to the fore the methods that work best, and tries to find the reasons why, using rational approaches.

I'm not an authority on the history of educational research, so I can't comment on when the following came to the fore, but below are some of points of interest in the course that I completed last year. I wont go into the details of what they all mean, any more than I'm going to explain what quantum chromodynamics is. Look them up if your are interested and decide whether they are worthwhile yourselves.

* the role of multiple 'channels' of perception in learning

* learning is an inherently social phenomenon

* analysis of the aplicability of various learning models to different learning situations, such as "transmission" of knowledge (a very much overused one .. just look at the term "lecturer")

* different students learn in different ways - faculties tends to develop a culture of teaching that is modelled on the way that they learnt - this leads to the poor performance of students who need other ways of learning - the educators involved tend to blame the students rather than seeing the limitations of their own technique

* 'alignment' of objectives, learning activities and assessment

* the concept of 'shallow' versus 'deep' learning activities, and how to encourage the 'deep' processes

* the importance of cross-disciplinary learning in today's world

* lots on online learning (and why a lot of it fails!)

* catering for students from different cultures, and how to do it

* lots on what it means to "understand" something

* lots on developmental stages (or lack of) in childen

* etc.

i'm a sucker for these kinds of discussions. seems to me that we're operating on a whole range of different assumptions about what research is and isn't (ie. mine is evidence-based and yours is a polemic), what it should and shouldn't do (ie. mine is about the production of reliable knowledge that adds value whereas yours is waffly and conceptual - read: of questionable utility), and that we agree on what's good about it. cards on the table... i am an educational researcher. in fact, in my job (for good or ill) i work with academics across a whole range of disciplinary areas who make precisely the same case that peter does. we usually disagree but it's always a great convo starter. with colleagues, i am part of that mob in universities that run those pesky graduate certificates in higher education where we encourage academics to think about teaching and learning as a form of scholarship, to reflect on their teaching, and to inquire into students learning. all forms of educational research. i'm always fascinated by the accusation of waffley-ness. it's almost as if the abstract nature of something like physics for instance, is seen as so utterly necessary for its work that it no longer has to defend itself as a waffly enterprise. it simply just exists as physics. but in education, conceptual, or similar work is a no, no... it ought to be clear, direct, concise... focused on the outcomes not that kind of high falutin, methodological sort of theorising. now, i'm not arguing against clarity but what i am saying is that like science, and like any other disciplinary area, the nature of research is contested. kuhn's work shows us this as did bits of latour. educational research in particular, is such a multifaceted phenomenon with a whole range of traditions running through it. i suppose i get abit worried when we try to make it be about one thing when its strength i think, is precisely it's open nature... but then again... that could just be the latent post-structuralist in me.

appreciate the provocation, taiz

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

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?

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.

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.

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

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.

Arjay's short contribution seems to suggest that current educational research is causing "social, moral and educational disintergration" [sic]. Unfortunately, he hasn't presented any evidence to uphold his view point. He suggests that "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" which is at odds with the fact that we currently have a conservative education minister. The one dimensional left-right wing argument is alway a gross oversimplification of the cosmos of political viewpoints anyway.

Firstly, there are many things that affect our society and politics. It is true that education is one of the big ones. But how do we measure the successes of our society? Is it really in decline?

Looking at this years Australian Institute of Crime statitics, we can see that the homicide rate for 2003 dropped 7% from the 2002 rate. The rates of many other types of crime have also dropped, but only one has risen (sexual assaults, by 1%). Even that increase might only reflect an increase in the amount that get reported, due to changes in society's attitudes. Indeed, it is well know amongst criminologist that the "explosion of crime" is simply a myth.

What else indicates the current state of play? If not hard crime stats, then what about the increase in the number of people doing voluntary work (I think QUT did the research on that), donating money (note the recent tsunami appeal) and the increases of racial and religious tolerance, and the decrease of sexist attitudes over the last few decades.

However, I don't really think that these wins for our society can be attributed soley to education. Ronald Inglehart's 'World Values Survey' research (http://wvs.isr.umich.edu/) has much more compelling arguments about why post-industrial society is changing, and it's all about the changing patterns we work and interact as we do increasing amounts of service-oriented work. I really recommend that interested people read up on it - it profoundly changed my views on our society's future.

Sams, you find strong support from civilisationalists, when saying education is joined by other influencers in determining culture's consequences. In this frame, "culture is adaptive to itself" (Quigley 1961) with adaptation being not merely integrated, but, rather "intergrative". That is, cultural variables, say, politics or economics, influence education; while, education also influences politics and economics.

Ajay, if I understand you correctly, you mention the educational environment has not changed since the 1980s, because one just plays politics and follows course policy documents. Not so:

Government has influence the funding of universities, and, establishes whom achieves matriculation into universities. In this frame, today, in secondary education, we too often have school teachers with normal (in a statistical sense)intellectual capacities . In tertiary education we have pressure on academics to educate average students, who are too intellectually challenged to cope with "higher education". Thus, we find in the first case primary and secondary student teachers extended and academics under pressure to soft mark, ignore paraphasing and plagiary, and to limit assessment scope by not comprehensively examining all learning outcomes. So, it is one thing to use terms, such as, curricula and higher education; but, another thing for these expressions to maintain meaning in today's world.

Australian education is a damaged and closed system. Dawkins created a mess and passed on the ball. Today, Nelson is making things even worse, while, retired Vice-Chancellors audit the mess made by the themselves and their successors... Just too many mess-ups and in-house monitoring. I meant it, when I said that Nelson will ultimately do Australia more damage to Australia than the Japanese bombing Darwin.

Newspapers highlighting HECS and Student student union issues are just shifting the deck chairs on the the Titanic, as the Minister and the AVCC ruin Australian the governance of Australia's education for selfish political reasons. Will they be sorry? Of course not. Rather, the current and future generations of Australians will suffer.

Car 54 where are you? Some comment from the original author would be helpful.

Cheers.

Just re-read the ARC example thet Peter quoted.What a lot of nebulus BS!Most of the Uni disciplines such as science,business,maths,music etc have maintained their standards over the years.I'm relating experiences from a public school past,of left wing teacher's unions which have had immense influence over education policy and attitudes.

Just that one ARC quote demonstrated to me that nothing has changed in terms of their vague and ill disciplined attitudes to the actual implementation of educational theory and practice.How can you derive real outcomes from that non specific nonsense?

Dr. Ridd raises three key points none of which his critics effectively address. A decline in literal and numeric competency in high school graduates is a widely recognized concern both here and in the U.S. While this decline might be due to societal influences outside the educational system (e.g. internet, TV, computer games) it is not found everywhere and education must take some responsibility for failing to effectively address what is being faced elsewhere without a similar decline in outcome.

Questioning the convoluted and jargon laden language of professional educators is also not unjustified. Specialized terminology is necessary to efficiently communicate complex and/or very specific ideas without elaborate and repetitive description and qualification. Such terminology tends to be clearly defined and understood by those involved and even the non-specialist can with a little effort readily learn its meaning. Education however, is rife with ill-defined terminology and jargon that conveys no more precise meaning than the common language it replaces. The language of education is not designed to clearly and efficiently communicate so much as it is intended to lend a facade of depth and import.

That education research has produced little of practical value is simply a fact. Although primary and secondary education in the U.S. and Australia has been directed by professional educationalists tertiary education has remained largely independent from them. While our primary and secondary education has fallen behind, our leading universities are among the world's best. It seems the methodology of teaching isn't nearly so important as knowledge and enthusiasm for the subject matter.

Education research is long on theory but short on verification. It has been characterized by fads based on untested theories. There is still little in the way of a firm foundation or progress in any particular direction. Since we obviously still don't know what we are doing a much more empirical approach is called for. Excellent individual teachers and schools do exist both here and elsewhere and there is much that could be learned from them.

Peter, I'm with you but I think your negative comments should not apply to those dedicated math/science teachers who invent new ways of teaching/learning (e.g. use of Java to visualize the complex plane, use of CAS in general relativity teaching, etc.). For those who invent words for a living (e.g. "post-structural teacher reflection"), I think they have created a new discipline that may belong better under linguistics or sth. What they do is bogus and these people have even created bogus journals and departments to publish bogus papers that should appear in newsletters/ newspapers rather than serious academic journals. There is a huge difference between common sense, routine stuff done by teachers(even if clothed in nearly incomprehensible fancy words) and real research such as cosmology, history or biology. Some of these "EdD"'s should consider giving away their degrees to mothers who pamper kids who have done a lot more real & positive stuff in the education of children. But then, all the chefs, drivers, etc. should all be awarded similar degrees also, maybe "ChFD", "DDD", etc. So, again, justify your existence guys!

"...Arguing against this summary is like punching at a nebulous miasma of jumbled words and ideas. It’s hard to know where to start."
Right on, man! And at least you've managed to describe this feeling. I've been unable to even express it to my friends who are doing lots of this sort of crap because I don't even know where to begin. Their stuff hardly makes sense to someone with a clear mind and prefers concise language, but somehow gets "proven" by some p-values and t-statistics at the end of their bogus papers. I mean just looking at the words they've invented leaves me speechless. It is like watching the Lord of the Rings where two actors speak to each other in "elf" language, but the actors got too carried away and started using this language even back in their normal lives, while they're not really saying anything! (Except in some galaxy far far away, where the official talk is Post-modernistical Social-constructivistical Meta-Nebula Miasmamical B.S. but that's beyond the comprehension of the human mind, so we have to create a new journal for it)
Thanks Peter and I'm with you all the way!

SAMS,but we have SOBS in charge of nearly every state in Aust.The teacher unions and Labor SOBS determine the real direction of education.Of course I'm be a tad simplistic ,but the left has held the lectern for too long.I'm here to stir the pot and balance the scales.

Well the words and ideas are certainly getting jumbled now, aren't they? Very little discussion of the alleged dumbing down, and a succession of increasingly vague and unsupported assertions pushing people's pet prejudices. Now it's all the Left's fault, apparently, and they have an unbalanced share of voice. Perhaps it's because teacher unions are interested in education? I'm no great fan of the conservative "left" that constitutes teacher unions, nor of the not quite as conservative "right" in Federal Government. If the "left" dominates and needs to have the balance redressed, how about the "right" doing more to build an alternative, rather than seeing education as a cost to be cut instead of the investment it clearly is? I would like to see less of the ignorant and unhelpful bashing of education and educators and more constructive suggestions.

What the left has been trying to achieve is the feeling of the"Inclusive Society",whereby everyone is an equal achiever.It sounds good in theory,however children soon determine pecking orders and know who has intellectual or leadership ability in the playground.When we read school reports these days,they often leave us less informed than prior to their consumption.

The real dilemma is how we make all feel worthwhile and maintain a healthy level of competition that maximises participation.

To have no expectations of our children is just as derelict of duty as those who live their lives through their children,pushing them the brink of rebellion.

The trick is in keeping the balance.Children should enjoy school,but also learn life skills and values that will help them survive in the work place.

I've never heard of anyone actually seeking equal achievement and would be very grateful for a direct quotation, please. Or a withdrawal. What I have heard - from the three fine (State) schools my children attend - is that every child has the potential to achieve something, be that maths, music, sport or whatever. And just the other day I heard from another young friend at an expensive school whose fellow student brought in her autistic brother, who has a number of obvious difficulties of course but a phenomenal memory - it got the kids out of thinking monodimensionally, for the benefit of all.

But Peter, don't forget there are physicists who do research that may never get applied either. E.g. string theory, do you think that will ever lead to better quality of life like solid state physics? Although their equations are not as cloudy as education research jargon, the practical value may be just about the same. This is true for many domains if not all. Many people in engineering do reserach just to get promotion, while no engineer would ever use it. But at least they don't use mumble-jumble to hide the uselessness and emptiness like some education people do.

The greatest physics educators I've met were all physicists, and their probably know little about education theory. Same goes for math/engineering. To be a good teacher you need to at least know the subject matter well, and have heart. I got this friend who's a drop-out from science, ended up getting a business degree from some crappy school, and is now teaching computers to high-school dropouts. He claims to be a scholar and is enrolled in an EdD program, and is really into the art of mumble-jumble. His "research interest" is "style", excuse me? Although he's going to use statistics (done by SPSS) to "support" his "research hypotheses", this dude hardly knows what a normal distribution is, and thinks that a "p-value" is "a number that's always exactly 0.01 or 0.05". It's outrageous that such people become "Dr.xxxx" someday and decide how we should educate our kids and how funding is distributed. It would make more sense to elect you as president of the United States, Peter. You're my hero, Mr. President. Please take out the nebulous miasma of mumble-jumble for us. They endanger our kids and waste our resources.

To Audrey--regarding comment#1 posted by you --
AGREEMENT, man, AGREEMENT--
"How can ONE lambast the research work of another when THEY quite clearly have no understanding of what they are critiquing!"

consider
"How can PEOPLE.... when THEY..."
or
"How can ONE.... when S/HE...."

Plus, to be fair to Peter, I think he already admitted he had no understanding of that piece of B.S., since it's "incomprehensible" to him.

P.S. I'm not a native speaker though my English teachers taught me well. But still not enough to understand a nebulous miasma of post-structural combinatorical mumble-jumble.

Colin ,just because you haven't heard or experienced a particular concept that is averse to your natural order,doesn't mean that it doesn't exist."Equal achiever"was coined by myself to describe what the leftest educationalists have trying to achieve,that is also reflected in many of their report cards.ie meaningless,banal,obscure and indefinable interms of their own critera.This cosy arrangement also allows many teachers to be unaccountable in terms of producing real outcomes.

I think lots of "education research", such as "thinking style", "post-structural xxx", is complete crap. It's for losers who cannot do real scientific research. Little (if not none) of such research has led to any advancement of real knowledge or improved the quality of students. "Education" should not be regarded as an academic discipline to begin with, just like "breastfeeding" should not be a college major, though is something important that certain people do on a daily basis. To dream up all kinds of intangible words and concepts to turn it into "research" is just silly, like the Emperor's New Clothes. Shame on you guys. Take a look at a real research paper/thesis written by a mathematician, a historian or a chemist. Stop bullshXXting for a living.

A SIMPLE RECIPE FOR "EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH":

(1) Find some existing mumble-jumble and make it even longer by adding some strange words
(2) Invent some new words or combination of words that don't exist in the dictionary
(3) Take something really simple and obvious from education (e.g. students prefer to see blue ink than green) and make invent some new language (but still in ENglish) it sound really compicated
(4) Let students fill out some questionnaire and feed the data blindly into SPSS, out comes a bunch of t-statistics, p-values and correlation coefficients while the researcher cannot even justify why the population can be assumed to be Gaussian.
(5) Mix well
(6) Establish some journals and degree programs that specialize in the abovementioned bull crap.

Outcome: of course, a huge success for education, since someone who failed MATH001, PHYSICS001, STAT001, PSYCH001 can now get a PhD! Praise the Lord!

Any thoughts? Too ashamed to speak you people out there who bullshXt for a living?

Bradley wrote: "Any thoughts? Too ashamed to speak you people out there who bullshXt for a living? "

I think perhaps Bradley that they can see that your arguments have already been discussed and refuted by previous posts - so why bother replying. Your post is just a troll, isn't it? I'm a programmer and ex-physicist who hapened to do a grad. cert. in higher education back when I wasd lecturing. It was a great experience, and, as I said, there is valuable stuff there. Don't knock something just because you are ignorant of it.

This is becoming tiresome. In response to my polite request for anyone to provide evidence of people seeking "equal achievement" we are told by Arjay that the concept exists because he made it up. If Arjay were to actually read the research that he ignorantly abuses, he'd see that discussions about equality of outcomes not being confused with equality of opportunity have been around for decades.

You see the difficulty in belittling something you don't know enough about?

And Bradley, it really isn't very civilised to disapprove of something just because you don't understand it. Show a bit of tolerance and you just might learn something!

This forum isn't on line opinion, this is on line ignorant ranting.

I'm unsubscribing - I work for a living and don't have time for this any more. Pity, it seemed like a good idea.

Now Colin don't take your bat and ball and go home.The human genome is very imperfect.The diversity produces a great variance in our society in terms of ability and diversity of aptitude,emotion and intelligence.It happens in every family.

We have to make the less able feel wanted,but not be a burden on society,the more able should be encouraged,since their diligence supports the less able with their taxes.

To punish the able to the point of exhaustion and loss of quality of life,is socialism gone insane.The intelligent hard workers deserve time off also.

P.S. I Don't have to justify my concept of "equal achiever" to anyone.Yes we are all human,but we need the doers,the courageous,the creative,and the masters of logic to make our society work!

The idea that there has been no significant advances stemming from educational research is indeed ill informed. The following news item is but one example of the ongoing improvements in terminology for which educational research is justly renouned: "Among official job-title changes implemented by the Scottsdale, Ariz., school district this year, according to a February Arizona Republic report, were those for receptionist (now, "director of first impressions") and school bus driver (now, "transporter of learners"). Said Superintendent John Baracy, "This is to make a statement about what we value in the district. We value learning." Said the new first-impressions director, "I think it's classy. Everyone wants to be important." [Arizona Republic, 2-23-05]"

Hey Sams, don't get me wrong, I have a Cert Ed myself (and a PhD in applied mathematics). I agree that many uni. teachers should get some training on teaching and they should make some of these people do a CertEd not only high school teachers. What I am furious about is the kind of fake research produced by so-called education theorists who do little more than inventing big words for trivial stuff, like the kind mentioned in Peter's first post. There are many hard workers in education, including many not belonging to an education department (e.g. IT workers helping students visualize the complex plane with Java, physicists who wrote the classic texts to make a hard subject easy, engineers who write analysis software for student use, etc.). I have profound respect for these people for their contribution to education, one of the most valuable things in our society. Since it is so important, we should not tolerate "researchers" (mostly carrying the title of "lecturer/professor" who get paid as much as the solid state physicists and engineering professors, yet contribute little that has any real value to real education. You can translate their fancy language to plain English, but what you'll then find is something trivial that would look silly to be published in an academic journal. So the cycle continues-in order to get published, they create more bogus material and the whole domain of education has now become trashland. If you cannot do real research, don't. Inventing a nebulous miasma of mumble-jumble while getting paid as a scholar is unethical. We should and must do concrete and tangible things that really will benefit the students and teachers.

To wstarck:
Sorry, I'm not a native speaker so I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic or real. But if the whole deal about education theory is to invent new and more respectful/uplifting words for existing items, this can and should be done by language experts and doesn't require the tens of millions of funding we're putting into education now. One should also be careful not to make things worse because big words often lead to confusion. I remember my English teacher told us this story: some bureaucrats love saying "terminate the illumination" --an impressive way to say "turn off the lights" but, what for?

To Arjay:
I'm also not getting your point, are you saying that those with less IQ and little real skills but still professors wanna-be's should study the Art of Nebulous Miasma? But don't forget that all professors are paid the same (at least in my country which is in Europe) and this is unfair to the physicists who work their backs off and seldom engage in bogus talk.

Bradley wrote: "We should and must do concrete and tangible things that really will benefit the students and teachers."

Of course (although it is hard to know what tangible really means here!), but my original argument pointed out that time wasters don't just occur in educational research, but in all areas of research, and many other areas as well (in business for example). In fact, I was dismayed about what sometimes goes on in theoretical physics research for entirely the same reason, which why I found it easy to get out of, and into the more tangible area of programming. I don't think science researchers should be pointing the finger at education researcher without a bit of self-examination in the process.

The deeper question is what is of benefit to society, why, and most importantly, who should decide ... but I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader :-)

Bradly,quite the contrary.Nebulus Miasma is the subterfuge of many educationalists who seek refuge in confusion.Our politicians and lawyers do this for a profession.We call it spin.It is just a result of too many public servants having too much time on their hands.

They become counter productive to societies aims and people in private enterprise who work hard and long for all this BS for no result.

The result of high taxation and wasted private enterprise is family break down due to interfering socialist do gooders and the collapse of motivation with the resultant demise of our economy.

Am I making sense now?

OK Arjay, thanks and I think I can relate to what you're saying now. For example, some of these "Dept. of Education" (state level) people would invent all sorts of bogus yet extremely time-wasting activities that every high school teacher must follow. I prefer teaching and learning the good old-fashioned way--if you study chemistry, then focus on the chemistry! Now it's like less than half of the time is devoted to the actual subject. Teachers have to attend all sorts of BS meetings and discussions, and do all sorts of bogus evaluations that tell you nothing. Some schools actuall close the book and "let the students learn themselves by just helping them to find out how learn..." I'm glad we don't have to listen to these morons at universities so that we still have some people who can do something. Otherwise all graduates will be morons due to the moronic policies set forth by retarded brains who claim to be researchers and policy makers in education.

Many teachers (especially in secondary schools) who lack the technical skills to do any real reserach, yet dream to be called "Dr.xxx" end up doing bogus "educational research". This is the academic equivalent of the Emperor's new clothes. These morons usually go for "Ed.D"s and the only research they do is to write 50000 words for every bogus idea that really only takes 5 words to mention. Yet these people are not ashamed of themselves when they see real researchers such as physicists and engineers. They just say, "Oh, you're the realist, but you don't understand our socio-constructivism-psycho-analytic-holistic nature of research".

Get out of here you useless education researchers, thinking style and squatting style experts, so that our kids can get on with real education and teachers don't have to waste time learning your bogus theories that do nothing but harm to real education!!

SHAME on you, the "education researcher"! Our education system is getting sick because of your "research" which the government takes seriously. If you have nothing better to do, and have no real skills, why not learn & become a farmer or a fisherman so you can do something real for the society; at least you won't be wasting tax payers' money while setting policies that ruin their kids' future.

Bradley wrote: "why not learn & become a farmer or a fisherman so you can do something real for the society"

I tried to get a fisherman to fix my computer. He said it wasn't the PC but a problem with the net. :-)