The Science of the Obvious

Dr. R. Barker Bausell was the first educational researcher to demonstrate the learning superiority of both tutoring and small group instruction when the curriculum, teacher differences, instructional time, and student differences were rigorously controlled. He served as a biostatistician, research methodologist, and the Director of Research in two departments within the University of Maryland over a 35+ year career and was the founding editor/editor-in-chief of the peer reviewed, Evaluation and the Health Profession for 33 of those years. He has authored 12 other books including: Conducting Meaningful Experiments: 40 Steps to Becoming a Scientist, Too Simple to Fail: A Case for Educational Change, and Snake Oil Science: The Truth about Complementary and Alternative Medicine.

Introduction

Chapter One: Some Examples of Educational Research that Aren’t
Chapter Two: Contributors to this Sad State of Affairs
Chapter Three: Four Once Useful Influential Genres That We Probably No Longer Need
Genre #1: Classic Learning Research
Genre #2: Secondary Analyses of Test Scores
Genre #3: Preschool or Extra-School Descriptive/Correlational Educational Studies.
Genre #4: School-Based, Descriptive/Observational Studies.
Chapter Four: Three Research Genres That Were Never Useful and Should Be Abandoned
Research Genre #5: Psychometric research:
Research Genre #6: Meta-Analysis:
Genre #7: Scale-up experiments.
Chapter Five: Three Genres that Could Have Some Potential for Creating a Meaningful Science
Genre #8: Experiments Conducted under Veridical Schooling Conditions.
Genre #9: Natural Experiments (Evaluations) Conducted within Schools.
Genre #10: Experiments Conducted in Schools under Laboratory Conditions
Chapter Six: Genre #11 – Programmatic Educational Research Conducted by a Single Investigator
Chapter Seven: Genre #12 – Recent, Well-Designed Genre-Crossing Research Considered
Important Enough to Garner Media Attention

Final Thoughts
References