The education field, these authors assert, often alternatively ignores, belittles, or "weaponizes" scientific findings and evidence relevant to education. They show examples of how education does a worse job than other fields at either rushing to apply approaches without enough evidence of effectiveness or…

The world of research has much knowledge to benefit practitioners, but it can be hard for practitioners to know where and how to sift through the research base to find the most relevant information for their needs. By translating problems of practice into the narrower types of questions that research can answer, educators can locate relevant…

Teachers can help students "find" problems by brainstorming potential research ideas connected to interests they already have. Students of all ages can do descriptive, historical, experimental, correlational, and developmental research. Case, field, causal, and comparative research might be more successful with older students. Conducting real…

Article stresses the need for decision makers and educational researchers to work more closely together. (ML)

Learning styles advocates claim long-term improvements in four aspects of teaching and learning: curriculum design, instructional methods, assessment, and student guidance. The application of learning style theory encompasses three pervasive problems: confusion in definitions, weakness in measurement reliability and validity, and identification of…

Learning styles represent a type of aptitude-treatment interaction suggesting that a person's distinctive characteristics (aptitudes) can be matched to a specific treatment (instructional method) yielding a more effective outcome than could otherwise have been achieved. Special education research does not support categorizing youngsters or using…

The responses of Professors Heckman and Elmore to this author's critique of the ASCD's "Public Schools of Choice" monograph reinforce her original reservations. The ASCD report overlooks the urgency of the present context and the inadequacy of alternatives to choice, makes unfeasible research demands, denies its own bias, and makes questionable…

In the May 2001 "Educational Leadership," Stanley Pogrow wrote another article attacking the Success for All program and comprehensive reform. SFA has been highly evaluated in numerous studies and by 52 individual researchers. Pogrow is a competitor who believes his own program (Higher Order Thinking Skills) has been slighted. (Contains…

Reviews the research on the effectiveness of five thinking skills training programs: Instrumental Enrichment, Philosophy for Children, Structure-of-Intellect (SOI), Problem Solving and Comprehension: A Short Course in Analytical Reasoning, and Odyssey. Compares and contrasts the content of each program and describes the relative lack of adequate…

Without more unanimity about which characteristics contribute to a school's effectiveness, it is difficult to know which characteristics to use as a focus for improvement. (Author/JM)

Research shows that from the beginning students should be taught through their perceptual strengths; students can identify their preferences accurately; and younger children learn better through visual experiences than auditory experiences, and best through tactile-kinesthetic experiences. (Author)

Ruth Wade replies to an article written by Georgea Sparks in the same issue of "Educational Leadership" (EA 518 309) as a response to Wade's meta-analysis of inservice teacher education also appearing in this issue (EA 518 308). A closer look at the major findings is needed. (DCS)

Data indicate that absolute summer achievement decline is not common. Relative decline, where low achievers do not keep pace over the summer with their peers, is common. Finally, attendance at summer school appears to have no strong ameliorative effect on achievement, either short-term or longer-term. (Author/MLF)

Provides a synthesis and a critique of Kulik and Kulik's metasynthesis and Slavin's best-evidence syntheses regarding ability grouping for gifted students. Although both studies address important issues, concerns such as teacher and parent attitudes to grouping and use of gifted students as role models are ignored. Includes 22 references. (MLH)

Criticizes John Goodlad's book "A Place Called School," claiming the conclusions and recommendations are questionable because of a limited review of the literature, a lack of student achievement data, and methodological problems. (MLF)