A project involving prospective social studies teachers as collaborators in an experimental investigation is described. The study was undertaken as part of the course requirements for an integrated educational psychology/secondary methods course. The course was intended to ameliorate the fragmentation of the coursework and lack of coherence between theory and practice in the teacher preparation program. Students were required to participate in a novice-assisted investigation. They selected the effect of using advance organizers to improve student retention as their topic and chose to replicate a study of the spacing effect by J. Glover and others (1990). The student-conducted study examined the use of advance organizers for 450 middle school students. Outcomes of the research project indicate that novices (the prospective teachers) can become critical consumers of knowledge about teaching, and they are capable of acquiring the knowledge and skills to do competent research. Also noteworthy was that they did not change their orientation toward attaching more credibility to the advice of practicing teachers and the "pure application" literature than to the theoretical and empirical sources for information on best practice. (SLD)