Research Based

The world around us is in a constant state of flux - for better or for worse, so when we prepare children to live in it, we need to keep updating what we teach and how we teach. Therefore, teaching pupils and teaching teachers are fields that need to be in a constant state of being-developed. Lacking an oracle to tell us what to do, we need to fall back on the scientific method of determining the right coarse. It takes research - or in this case - Applied Research.

Putting aside the hypothesizing and planning stages, research activity may be divided into two main types: What could be described as passive research activity involves observing and analyzing the subjects, without any interference. What could be described as active research activity involves making a change to a group of subjects, then observing changed groups and control groups, and analyzing.

The most basic activity is that of observing, and already here we have some difficulty - people like their privacy: Teachers like their privacy, and parents worry about the privacy of their children. Privacy and visibility inherently contradict each other, but without visibility of teaching and learning, we can't know where we are, and we can't manage our way from where we are to where we want to be. Living in an imperfect world, we can't have full visibility with total privacy. But we can design a system to enable enough visibility without serious breach of privacy. A general guideline towards such a system is that of anonymization: Minimize access to information that can identify individuals (e.g, names), while keeping information relevant to analysis (e.g., transcripts of class discussions). Another major guideline is zealous maintenance of trustworthiness. Every breach of privacy - real or perceived - will cause damage that would take much time and effort to reverse.

Active research as defined above is based on making changes to the teaching method, or learning environment. As discussed in a previous post, such experimental changes are not guaranteed to work. They can even create problems that will need to be fixed. This leads to some justified concern. But as shown in the same post, there is no way around that risk AND such experimentation already takes place. The best we can do about it is to make sure that experiments are well managed, and any damage is promptly identified and mended, using the best resources available to the education establishment. As in the case of privacy, trustworthiness is paramount: Every problem must be seen to be identified and fixed, without any appearance of a cover-up and without sparing any effort. The system - and people within it - must resist the temptation of presenting the research as perfectly safe. This would be a very short-lived lie. Accidents will happen, everybody should be aware of it, and the system should be geared towards dealing with them quickly and effectively.

The common research activity of data analysis has many facets which are widely - and wildly - discussed in the context of various scientific fields: Quantitative and qualitative analysis, Statistical analysis, etc. I don't have anything to add to the general concepts and methods, which are in a continuous process of being developed over the past few centuries by the greatest scientific minds.

Academic research in education is often financed by grants, and is often done by Masters or PhD students. The grants run out, and the researchers move on. Usually, there is no money and attention left for follow-up research. A comprehensive education research system must adhere to a different line: Always follow up on past research. Passive research should be repeated periodically, to verify its continuing validity in a changing world, or to determine that it is no longer valid. This needs to be done also after an active research experiment that was deemed successful and resulted in a change of method, in order to validate it. Active research should be followed up, to check the teaching/learning experiments longer-term effects: Long term retention of knowledge and skills; habits strengthened or weakened by the experiment; and residual damage or benefits.

So much for the research methodology - a few paragraphs which can stand for a few books. Now: Research Based... What?

Generally, based on the research, we should have an organized way of updating teaching methods. For research to have real-world effect, it has to be able to cause a change in the behavior of the education system: Students, parents, teachers, administration, government, and probably more. This connection between research - which relies to a large extent on the academia - and the real world, is not trivial. The language is different, the pace is different, the natural priorities are different. It will take thought and work.

Research-Based Learning Environment: Many factors possibly affect learning: The arrangement of the class, the size of the class, the number of teachers, types of teachers, teachers moving between students' home classes or students moving between teachers' home classes, whether there are computers in the classroom, whether there is one or more students per computer, whether students use calculators in the classroom, generally whether much technology is available, lecturing, group-work or a combination, online or offline, etc. etc. etc. All these need to be methodically researched.

Research-Based Teaching Methods: There are many schools of thought - almost religions - in the field of teaching and learning, many of which are application of psychological theories to the field of education. Cognitivism, Connectivism, Constructivism, CHAT, and quite a few that don't start with a "C". For a deeper and more detailed discussion, see Learning Theories and Educational Psychology. Each school of thought can give rise to many possible methods. Many of them have been tried by different individuals, but methodical research can give clearer answers, regarding what we can use at this point in time and with the current state of civilization.

Research-Based Teachers' Education: The same issues as for pupils - learning environment and teaching methods - need to be resolved for educating teachers. See Research-based Teacher Education in Finland (sorry, it's a for-sale book) for a discussion of a proven system.

For all of the above, continuous research is due.