|
JUNE 2003
McEwan, E.K., & McEwan, P.J. (2003).
Making sense of research: What's good, what's not, and how to tell the difference.
Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. Yes, the subtitle (What's Good, What's Not, and How to Tell the Difference)
promises to teach the reader far more than any 174-page book could deliver.
Notwithstanding the initial bit of hyperbole, however, the authors do not leave
that ambitious covenant entirely unfulfilled. In this lively and adventuresome
textbook, the McEwans (veteran educational consultant, Elaine, and her academic
economist son, Patrick) really do set out to help practitioners "make sense
of research" – by building their book around five simple questions
that can be raised about any element in public education:
- The causal question: Does it work?
- The process question: How does it work?
- The cost question: Is it worthwhile?
- The usability question: Will it work for me?
- The evaluation question: Is it working for me?
Having argued that those are the "right" questions for stakeholders
to raise about any proposed intervention (or any in-place policy or procedure),
they proceed to stick with their announced intention to write a book for the
people who might wish to actually use research -- teachers, administrators,
teacher educators, parents, and legislators. They are at some pains to make
the converse point that the book is not intended for the people who actually
do research, although by the time they are finished it is perfectly clear that
the authors (and, I suspect, most readers) wish that they could creep up under
cover of darkness and toss copies over the walls of some ivory towers to stir
up healthy trouble amongst the academics!
Based on my own experience, I can testify that most teachers and graduate students
will find the brief chapter titled: "Behind the Scenes in the World of
Educational Research," the most laudable and certainly the most memorable
part of the book. My only complaint is that the chapter should be twice as long
and offer more suggestions for further reading (of the sort that non-specialists
can digest). Most textbook authors and most professors of education never bother
to tell their clients about things like "Who does educational research?"
"Who pays for it?" "Where can you find it?" "Can you
really trust research?" and "Does educational research really matter?"
Most of us are all too interested in the how and what of the research enterprise,
and by being neglectful (or pedantic and simplistic) about the who, where, and
why of things, we leave readers and students ignorant of some vital facts that
are foundational for any real understanding.
All six of the succeeding chapters share a single structure. Each of the five
seminal questions are raised in turn about four currently popular educational
innovations (that is six chapters because two are devoted to the causal question,
one for experimental evidence and a second for findings from quasi-experimental
and correlational designs):
- Class size reduction: Does size really matter?
- Phonics: Can it teach them all to read?
- Vouchers: Are private schools in the public good?
- Whole-school reform: Greater than the sum of its parts?
 Next Page
Pages: 1 | 2 |
|
