Educational practices: making the grade

What parents want for their children is simple—a quality education. Determining the best way to provide that to them, however, isn’t so easy. While an overwhelming amount of educational research exists, not all of it is conducted with the highest standards, making it difficult for educators to make sense of it all. That’s why a University of Missouri-Columbia team is taking part in a national effort to determine the most effective ways to educate children.

"Everyone is tired of education reflecting the latest fads," said Harris Cooper, professor of Psychological Sciences. "We want to create consistent research standards that educators can use as a guide when selecting proven curriculum for their students."

Cooper and Jeff Valentine, research assistant professor of Psychological Sciences, are part of a new U.S. Department of Education project called The What Works Clearinghouse (WWC). The project aims to create a comprehensive series of Web-based databases to provide the most solid evidence of what works in education. The MU team is charged with providing quality control for the clearinghouse. Cooper and Valentine will complete a preliminary set of standards for scientific research in education that will be made public on Nov. 11 on the internet at w-w-c.org/public/standards.html. On Nov. 22, they traveled to Washington, D.C., to unveil the standards at the National Academy of Sciences. A panel of the nation’s most distinguished social science researchers is assisting Cooper and Valentine. Next spring, the WWC will file its first evidence reports, including online registries for approaches and policies, educational interventions and test instruments.

"The problem is that there are numerous studies out there that try to tell you this program or that method is the most effective way to teach a child," Cooper said. "For quality control, we need to examine all the studies and decide which ones to use as the benchmark for evaluation. This involves developing standards for assessing the quality of educational research and seeing that these standards are applied to reports about educational policies and practices."

Cooper added that other disciplines already have similar systems in place to evaluate and summarize research. In the medical field, for example, the Cochrane Collaboration provides access to reliable reviews of the available evidence, allowing people to make informed health care decisions.

The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Educational Research and Improvement is funding the project. MU will receive $1.5 million over the next five years. Others involved in the project include the American Institutes for Research, the Campbell Collaboration, the University of Pennsylvania, Aspen Systems, Caliber Associates and the Education Quality Institute. To learn more, visit www.w-w-c.org.

Additional links:

Department of Psychological Sciences

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