When Did Research Stop Mattering in Education?

I return to school tomorrow for the second year of my doctoral program in Special Education. Our department gathered for a meeting last week in which our coordinator stressed to us the importance of getting our research into the hands of teachers. My discipline is famous or perhaps infamous for writing fantastically complex papers full of statistics, charts, research results, and recommendations all which are never viewed beyond the ivy covered walls of our collective institutions. It is mind boggling to witness this immense body of work go unnoticed by those who need to access it the most: classroom teachers and their administrators.

I wonder why, despite all of the effort that goes into conducting education research, seemingly so few decisions are made in education that are based on it. We shop in supermarkets that are designed based on human psychology and behavioral research. Our newspapers are written to appeal to the average reading comprehension of the general public. So why in education do we base our curriculum decisions, not on what academic studies tell us, but on what we perceive might work or what feels good? I couldn’t imagine going to a doctor who would tell me “I think this should work” yet educational practitioners do this every day. I want proof of effectiveness before we even get started. For example, we know that lectures are one of the worst ways to teach, yet at all grade levels it happens and happens often. During my first semester of my Masters program I even had a professor tell us DURING THE LECTURE that lecturing is not an effective teaching method. To his credit, he laughed at the irony, but his words stuck with me as I strive to create and maintain change in academics.

So where can we go to help create this change? We stand at a crossroads in education. We have failing schools, failing school districts, failing counties, and failing states. We have business leaders, sports stars, and pop stars creating interventions and schools, all professing to be the academic messiah. But where is the research beyond all of this effort? First we have to ask, what are our kids failing at? A standardized test? Then perhaps we should change the metrics by which we measure success. Are we presenting our children with an unsubstantiated curriculum that is designed to fail because no one examined the vast body of pedagogical research prior to unleashing it on a eager populace chomping on the bit for a quick fix yet ready to point the finger at teachers when it ultimately crashes? Apps, computer programs, workbooks, cue cards, and gadgets have infiltrated our schools, each promising to fix what ails us. We have new and improved tests, standards, strategies...but our kids are still missing the mark. We can blame it on the teachers, the kids, on technology, but ultimately we have to stop placing blame and  reconcile our efforts to the journals and pages of research coming out of our nation’s esteemed universities, and stop this incessant academic running in circles.

So to the teachers, parents, and community members reading this and asking, what can I do? Next time you hear of a new and improved academic program, app, games, or whatever else slip into our classrooms, ask - NO, DEMAND - to see the research behind it. Don’t just glance it over it. Devour it, cross-reference it, check the sources. Help us create a system in which only the best and brightest ideas make it into the classroom so that the best and brightest commodity our nation has to offer, our children, can succeed and excel.