EDPSY 500

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EDPSY 500

• Introduction to Educational Research Methods

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Syllabus

• Key points
• Introductory course
• For consumers
• Ph.D. students should take 505
• Office hours
• Tuesday 330 to 500
• Thursday 200 to 330
• Or by appointment

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Syllabus

• Key points (cont.).
• Assessment plan.
• Three exams (100 points each).
• Before exams we will generate a study guide.
• First and second exam items can be corrected for
  half credit.
• Well talk about this more after the first exam.
• Participation/quizzes (100 points).
• We will discuss in greater detail today.

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Syllabus

• Assessment (cont.).
• No extra credit.
• No incompletes.
• Except for extreme circumstances (e.g., Illness,
  death of family member).
• A comment on grades.
• They are earned not given.
• I am interested in your learning of marketable
  skills.
• Assignments require the mastery of course
  materials.
• High effort high mastery.
• High mastery high grades.

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Syllabus

• Professionalism
• Pathfinder
• Honesty
• Integrity
• Cheating, plagiarism, etc. will not be tolerated
  and will result in a referral to whoever is in
  charge of this place.
• Behavior
• Class starts at promptly at 400
• Turn off cell phones
• If you must leave early let me know
• Be respectful of others

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Syllabus

• Work habits.
• Read.
• Due dates are non-negotiable.
• All work should conform to APA guidelines.
• If in a field that does not use APA let me know
  in advance what guidelines your field uses.
• Other course policies.
• Religious accommodations.
• Disabilities.
• Inform and provide documentation.

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Who Is Here?

• In groups of three or four.
• Identify yourself and get know one another.
• Ask the following questions.
• What are your professional experiences?
• What is your program of study?
• What topics within your program interest you?
• What is your favorite recreational activity?
• What is your claim to fame?
• Be prepared to introduce one member of your
  group.
• Exchange email addresses and/or phone numbers.
• Contact if you miss class.
• Bounce ideas.
• New friends.
• Misery loves company -).

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Discussion

• As a group discuss the following questions
• What is research?
• Is reality knowable?
• What is the relationship between the knower and
  what can be known?
• How does one go about knowing reality?

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What Is Research?
It depends on how you answered the three other
questions
Ontology
What is reality?
What is the relationship between knowledge and
the knower?
Epistemology

• How does one go about knowing reality?

Methodology
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A Paradigm Is

• "A set of basic beliefs (or metaphysics) that
  deals with ultimate or first principles. It
  represents a worldview that defines, for its
  holder, the nature of the 'world', the
  individual's place in it, and the range of
  possible relationships to that world and its
  parts, as, for example, cosmologies and
  theologies do." Guba Lincoln.

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A Paradigm Is

• Kuhn defines paradigms as having two
  characteristics
• "Their achievement was sufficiently unprecedented
  to attract an enduring group of adherents away
  from competing modes of scientific activity."
• "It was sufficiently open-ended to leave all
  sorts of problems for the redefined group of
  practitioners to solve."

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So what?

• "Differences in paradigm assumptions cannot be
  dismissed as mere 'philosophical' differences
  implicitly or explicitly, these positions have
  important consequences for the practical conduct
  of inquiry, as well as for the interpretation of
  findings and policy choices."
• Guba
  Lincoln

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Paradigms As Human Constructions

• Any given paradigm represents simply the most
  informed and sophisticated view of its
  proponents.
• Must rely on utility and persuasiveness rather
  than proof.

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Paradigms

• Positivism
• Deterministic
• Reductionism
• Empirical observation and measurement
• Methods
• Experimental, manipulative, verification

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Paradigms (Cont.)

• Postpositivism
• Theory testing
• Probabilistic
• Know reality imperfectly
• Replication
• Methods
• Experimental, surveys, causal-comparative,
  observational, interviews

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Paradigms (Cont.)

• Critical theory
• Political
• Empowerment
• Collaborative
• Change-oriented
• Social justice
• Methods
• Participatory action research

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Paradigms (cont.)

• Constructivism
• Understanding
• Multiple participant meanings
• Social construction
• Theory generation
• Methods
• Grounded theory, case studies, narrative research

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Truth
creatings
Verification
Falsification
What is can only be whats known
Accretion
Misunderstood as a central element
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CP194
???
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What Makes ResearchScientific?
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According to the Dictionary Science

• Is the observation, identification, description,
  experimental investigation, and theoretical
  explanation of phenomena.

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How does the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001
(NCLB) impact educational research?
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Who Cares? You should.

• The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 uses the
  phrase scientifically-based research (SBR) 111
  times.
• This has spawned an industry of consultants.
• It has created a very volatile atmosphere.

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What Is Scientific Research?(According to NCLB)

• The application of rigorous, systematic, and
  objective procedures to obtain reliable and valid
  knowledge.
• Systematic, empirical methods that draw on
  observation or experiment.
• Involves rigorous data analyses that are adequate
  to test the hypotheses.
• Is evaluated using experimental or
  quasi-experimental designs.
• Is reported in sufficient detail to allow
  replication.
• Has been accepted by a peer-reviewed journal or
  approved by an independent panel of experts
  through rigorous, objective, and scientific
  review.

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What Paradigm Appears to Be Influencing NCLB?

• Postivism?
• Post-positivism?
• Critical Theory?
• Constructivism?

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Between a Rock and a Hard Place

• The rock.
• Calling for scientifically based research is good
  and needed.
• The recent enactment of no child left behind,
  and its central principle that federal funds
  should support educational activities backed by
  scientifically-based research, offers an
  opportunity to bring rapid, evidence-driven
  progress for the first time to U.S.
  Elementary and secondary education. Coalition
  for evidence-based policy.

• The hard place.
• Defining SBR as randomized experimental designs
  is over-restrictive.
• The requirement that research methods be
  restricted to group design with a preference for
  randomized clinical trials will significantly
  inhibit the development and validation of new
  scientific knowledge in education. American
  association on mental retardation (AAMR) board of
  directors.

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• Council recognizes randomized trials among the
  sound methodologies to be used in the conduct of
  educational research and commends increased
  attention to their use as is particularly
  appropriate to intervention and evaluation
  studies. However, the council of the association
  expresses dismay that the department of education
  through its public statements and programs of
  funding is devoting singular attention to this
  one tool of science, jeopardizing a broader range
  of problems best addressed through other
  scientific methods. The council urges the
  department of education to expand its current
  conception of scientifically-based research.
  AERA council

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What Is Scientific Research?(According to the
NRC)

• Science poses significant questions that can be
  investigated empirically.
• Science links research to relevant theory.
• Science uses methods that permit direct
  investigation of the question.
• Science provides a coherent and explicit chain of
  reasoning.

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What Is Scientific Research?(According to the
NRC)

• Scientific findings replicate and generalize
  across studies.
• Scientists disclose research and encourage
  professional scrutiny and critique.

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Mayer (2000)

• Lets take a few minutes and read Mayer.
• What makes research scientific?
• How important is it that educational research be
  respected in academia and in society in
  general?
• Should science and research mean the same
  things in different disciplines?
• What questions/ comments do you have?

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Mayer (2000)
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The Big Picture

• There are many different research processes
• Each has its own
• Philosophy of inquiry
• Methods of inquiry
• Purposes for doing research
• Processes and rules
• Here is one process

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Scientific Thinking Vs. Everyday Thinking

• Everyday thinking
• Biased questions
• Do you really support the war?
• Limited sampling
• Your friends and family are different from my
  friends and family
• Selective attention
• Confirmation bias
• Inaccurate generalization
• Stereotypes

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Scientific Thinking Vs. Everyday Thinking (Cont.)

• Scientific thinking.
• Empirical observations.
• Empirical capable of being confirmed, verified,
  or disproved by observation or experiment.
• Systematic.
• Objective.
• Less dependent on emotion or personal prejudices.
• Replicable.

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Purposes of Scientific Research

• Exploratory
• What is out there?
• Descriptive
• What does this group look like?
• Explanatory
• Why and how are these constructs related?
• Evaluation
• Does this program work?
• Prediction
• Who will become depressed?