[senco-forum] [SENCo-forum] empirical research

From: Sheridan <sheridan.sharp1 at btinternet.com>

If all Educational research comes down to individual differences of opinion, 
and I must admit it has in the past and is still doing so then we are going 
to go round in circles as we seem to do.  Even in the ivory towers egos and 
career aspirations rule the roost and you must not rock the boat, even 
though it is heading for the rocks with the crew asleep at the wheel.   The 
Rose Review laid out the consensus of what works, the primary strategy is 
revamped, SP given priority and then the government brings back Reading 
Recovery, the madmen are truly running the asylum!

The problem with most educational research is that it is either qualitative 
or correlational, very little of it is quantitative and empirical.  It also 
tends to be done once and not replicated yet on the basis of this 
educational policies are built and put into practice.   If you read the 
likes of Brooks on the matter you will find that results are often reported 
in ways that do not allow meaningful comparisons between teaching methods, 
Solity has a lot to say on this and it makes good sense.  Another problem 
lies in the inability of educational researchers to support each other, 
rather they tend to attack each other.  Some few years ago Solity set up a 
good early reading scheme in the S. of England, it was successful over the 
long term in schools that were considered to be less than effective and 
which were by and large in deprived areas.  It worked well, what did HMG do, 
why they ignored it and kept on with the NLS.  There have been other good 
programmes developed and then evaluated but the system seems to shy away 
from accepting anything that reeks of numbers or rigour, and I speak from 
experience.

The move away from testing (I am no fan of SATs as Tymms and the National 
Statistical Office have shown that they are essentially invalid measures) 
and towards 'child focussed' teaching sounds good and I do think we start 
some children too early on formal learning, however if we abandon testing 
how will we know what is working and what is not.  The problem with 'child 
focussed' is that the problem of a child not learning then becomes an 
internal fault in the child not the external environment they are exposed 
to.  We have been here before, why are we going back?  If we are going to 
test children, and we should to make sure they are progressing, it should be 
with properly set up and validated norm referenced tests so that like can be 
measured with like.

Philip EP

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Maggie Downie" <maizie2004 at yahoo.co.uk>
To: <kngbrndn at aol.com>; <P.Macmillan at exeter.ac.uk>; <lucass at loretto.com>; 
<senco-forum at lists.becta.org.uk>; <SEN at tringham.net>; 
<dolfrog at dolfrog.org.uk>; "Sheridan" <sheridan.sharp1 at btinternet.com>
Sent: Sunday, May 25, 2008 10:43 AM
Subject: RE: [senco-forum] [SENCo-forum] empirical research

There may never be consensus, but there can be convergence.  It is the 
convergence demonstrated by replication of results that leads to the 
acceptance of a theory as being probably correct.

Maggie

--- On Sun, 25/5/08, Sheridan <sheridan.sharp1 at btinternet.com> wrote:

> From: Sheridan <sheridan.sharp1 at btinternet.com>
> Subject: RE: [senco-forum] [SENCo-forum] empirical research
> To: kngbrndn at aol.com, maizie2004 at yahoo.co.uk, P.Macmillan at exeter.ac.uk, 
> lucass at loretto.com, senco-forum at lists.becta.org.uk, SEN at tringham.net, 
> dolfrog at dolfrog.org.uk
> Date: Sunday, 25 May, 2008, 9:30 AM
> Very true Brandon.  Every research is analysed and reviewed
> by individuals
> who will put their own interpretation on what they read,
> see etc. There will
> never be a total consensus of opinion on anything.
>
> No virus found in this outgoing message.
> Checked by AVG.
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> Date: 24/05/2008
> 08:56

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