Back to School – Conducting Educational Research
As we head into a new school year and kiddos are getting back into the swing of things, it’s also time to think about getting back into the swing of educational research and evaluation. Educational institutions have long been leaders in program evaluation and research through robust projects examining curriculum effectiveness, programmatic interventions, and holistic student supports. These projects help support students’ long-term learning and ensure that learning happens equitably for all students. For those who might be less familiar with what research and evaluation in educational settings looks like, we’ve outlined four key considerations.
Effective educational research presents the opportunity to innovate and tailor how we help our next generations learn, grow, and thrive.
Gaining Access. One of the first major considerations is how to appropriately gain access to any student or institutional data needed for your research. If actively collecting data, you’ll likely need to gain consent from students (and often their parents) to participate. Reaching and obtaining consent from each student (and parent) can require quite a bit of effort, and of course, you’ll have to plan an alternative for families who choose to opt-out. Even if you’re not directly gathering data and instead relying on existing institutional data (e.g., de-identified grades, attendance), you will likely still need to build a relationship with the institution who holds the data. This might include going through a formal request and review process. Be sure to plan ahead as it can take several months to receive approval and access your desired data.
Crafting Age-Appropriate Research Tools. The second consideration when collecting data in educational settings is how to create research tools that are age-appropriate for the students of interest. If working with college-age students, you might be able to use Likert-style rating scales to ask about perceptions, behavioral intentions, and outcomes like self-efficacy, for example. But if working with kindergarten students, you might need to ask simple prompts where students can point to their reactions from a set of emojis. If spanning multiple ages and grade levels, you might develop multiple tools and cross-check their appropriateness by assessing the reading level of the language(s) used and/or piloting with smaller groups. Additionally, if relying on common age-appropriate standardized tests as outcomes, it’s important to recognize that many of those tests require fees and trained administrators, especially for “general mental ability”-related tests (e.g., WISC, WAIS, ACT, SAT).
Understanding Effects. The third consideration involves translating evaluation data into meaningful takeaways and conclusions. It is important to recognize early on in the research process that educational interventions and programs often result in what the research world calls “small effect sizes.” That means with an effective intervention you might see a few points increase in test grades, but you are not likely to see cohorts leaps 2 or 3 “letter” grades to the top of the class. So, it is key to manage expectations of different stakeholders and to not “oversell” what improvements or changes might look like. Assessing and finding even small effects in the data can still signify meaningful changes for students over time. Additionally, one of the most important ways research can serve educational programs and interventions is in testing for group differences (e.g., do experiences differ based on learner race/ethnicity?). Using data to identify and create solutions to bridge any group differences in experiences is critical to support all learners, and it also serves as a key level of accountability in efforts to improve equity in educational experiences.
Using Rich Data. And last but not least, educational research presents an opportunity for incredibly rich data that are timely, close to the source of intervention, and supported by large and long-term existing data systems. These are three things that can make research really impactful! Effective educational research presents the opportunity to innovate and tailor how we help our next generations learn, grow, and thrive. At the same time, it is so important that any research truly supports and does not overburden learners or teachers, who have the #1 goal of learning.
Educational research is a powerful tool to support youth and adult learners, and we hope ongoing research efforts can help members of our community get back to their new “normal” and make improvements across the board. If you’d like to chat more about educational research opportunities that C1C can support, feel free to reach out!