Why Education Experts Resist Effective Practices (And What It Would Take to Make Education More Like Medicine)
April 1, 2000
Education experts tend to ignore research-based practices like Direct Instruction and instead embrace constructivist methods that are not backed by good research. This report by Douglas Carnine explains why.
Contents
- Foreword
- Introduction
- Embracing Teaching Methods that Dont Work
- A Large-scale Education Experiment
- Direct Instruction after Project Follow Through
- Learning from Other Professions
- Making Education a Mature Profession
- Notes
Foreword
In perhaps no other profession is there as much disputation as in education. Phonics or whole language? Calculators or no calculators? Tracked or mixed-ability classrooms? Should teachers lecture or facilitate ? Ought education be content-centered or child-centered? Do high-stakes exams produce real gains or merely promote teaching to the test ? Which is the most effective reform: Reducing class size? Expanding pre-school? Inducing competition through vouchers? Paying teachers for performance?
And on and on and on. Within each debate, moreover, we regularly hear each faction citing boatloads of studies that supposedly support its position. Just think how often research shows is used to introduce a statement that winds up being chiefly about ideology, hunch or preference.
In other professions, such as medicine, scientific research is taken seriously, because it usually brings clarity and progress. We come close to resolving vast disputes, and answering complex questions, with the aid of rigorous, controlled studies of cause and effect. Yet so much of what passes for education research serves to confuse at least as much as it clarifies. The education field tends to rely heavily on qualitative studies, sometimes proclaiming open hostility towards modern statistical research methods. Even when the research is clear on a subjectsuch as how to teach first-graders to readeducators often willfully ignore the results when they dont fit their ideological preferences.
To Professor Douglas Carnine of the University of Oregon, this is symptomatic of a field that has not yet matured into a true profession. In education, research standards have yet to be standardized, peer reviews are porous, and practitioners tend to be influenced more by philosophy than evidence. In this insightful paper, Doug examines several instances where educators either have introduced reforms without testing them first, or ignored (or deprecated) research when it did not yield the results they wanted.
After describing assorted hijinks in math and reading instruction, Doug devotes considerable space to examining what educators did with the results of Project Follow Through, one of the largest education experiments ever undertaken. This study compared constructivist education models with those based on direct instruction. One might have expected that, when the results showed that direct instruction models produced better outcomes, these models would have been embraced by the profession. Instead, many education experts discouraged their use.
Carnine compares the current state of the education field with medicine and other professions in the early part of the 20th century, and suggests that education will undergo its transformation to a full profession only when outside pressures force it to.
He knows the field well, as Director of the National Center to Improve the Tools of Educators, which works with publishers to incorporate research-based practices into education materials and with legislative, business, community and union groups to understand the importance of research-based tools. Doug can be phoned at 541-683-7543, e-mailed at dcarnine@oregon.uoregon.edu, and written the old fashioned way at 85 Lincoln St., Eugene, OR 97401.
The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation is a private foundation that supports research, publications, and action projects in elementary/secondary education reform at the national level and in the Dayton area. Further information can be obtained at our web site (www.edexcellence.net) or by writing us at 1627 K Street, NW, Suite 600, Washington, DC 20006. (We can also be e-mailed through our web site.) This report is available in full on the Foundations web site, and hard copies can be obtained by calling 1-888-TBF-7474 (single copies are free). The Foundation is neither connected with nor sponsored by Fordham University.
Chester E. Finn, Jr., President
Thomas B. Fordham Foundation
Washington, DC
April 2000
