Why Education Research Needs More Development

Teachers in the United States are facing various challenges and changes in their schools, and they need research to drive the development of
tools that can help them in the classroom. Current obstacles include the
persistent achievement gaps among low-income students and students of
color; changing demographics in the classroom; and the opportunities and
potential drawbacks presented by educational technology, including the
possibility that technology will contribute to growing achievement gaps.
Unfortunately, education research has fallen short of helping
practitioners in the field develop and implement the new technologies
and strategies that are necessary for success.Educational research and development
This argument is not new. Education research has long been the subject
of criticism, much of it justified. However, the real problem is that
education research rarely is oriented toward education development. This
must change in order for student outcomes to improve, particularly
among students of color and students from low-income areas.
In other words, the problem with education research today is not so much
one of quality as it is of coherence: To the detriment of teachers and
students, education research rarely responds to current needs and fails
to drive the development of hands-on technologies that help students.
In 1993, historian Carl Kaestle bemoaned the “awful reputation” of
education research. A decade later, the former National Academy of
Education President Ellen Condliffe Lagemann commented that education
research has been “demeaned by scholars in other fields, ignored by
practitioners, and alternatively spoofed and criticised by politicians,
policy makers, and members of the public at large.”
Criticism of education research tends to center on scientifically weak
or inconclusive results that are of dubious use to teachers and
students. For example, one of the flagship journals of the American
Educational Research Association recently published a paper that was a
two-year case study of a single classroom, despite the fact that
generalizing from a single classroom is widely considered to be
deficient research practice.