Educational Research : A dangerous weapon

As a new educator - the most important thing I wanted to avoid was distorting the reality by my own beliefs and conditioning. I think an educator who is not aware of his own biases and conditioning is the most dangerous creature walking inside the schools walls. He'll try to (and not even realize it) poison the young minds.

So, how shall a new educator like me go about forming my own judgement about various issues related to education ? My scientific background suggested me to follow - "Educational Researches" and stay upto date with latest findings in education sector.

To my disappointment, there isn't enough quality and true researches available in the field of education. We know a lot more about "How to sell a stupid product to an intelligent person ? " than we know about "How to educate our kids ?" .

Most of the education researches are just biased opinions. Politicized propagandas or Individual experiences.

To Lecture or Not to Lecture :

A website called "Education Next" (www.educationnext.org) has few articles/researches that have been discussing this point.

Look at the comment below :-

"No matter how much scaffolding, coaching, guidelines and requirements I set for the child centered activities, the students do better after direct instruction. Is this disappointing? You bet." - James Wohlgemuth in: comments on Eighth-Grade Students Learn More Through Direct Instruction

Is it not trying to say that better be a strict commander rather than trying to be a friendly child centered educator ? (which is the commonly held belief).

Above article is a good read if one just takes the research with little pinch of salt.

Here is another research on the same website - http://educationnext.org/more-lecturing-more-learning/ which says - More Lecturing means more learning. It puts lectureship over activity based learning. Here is a snippet from the conclusion :-

"Given the limitations of the data, our finding that spending increased time on lecture-style teaching improves student test scores results should not be translated into a call for more lecture-style teaching in general. But the results do suggest that traditional lecture-style teaching in U.S. middle schools is less of a problem than is often believed.

( conclusion from : http://educationnext.org/sage-on-the-stage/) "

My Take on Educational Researches

They are Dangerous. Education is such a vast topic and a very important issue of our world. It requires a very delicate treatment. It is equally if not more important to Health. We can't risk our health with some A,B,C researches unless they are proved by multiple sources or multiple researches. We cannot decide our action based on few limited researches. Education researches must also be taken equally seriously. WE NEED TO BE VERY CAUTIOUS !

Remember the infamous - Jewish/black people scientific research to prove them less intelligent ? We must keep it in mind everytime we come across any educational research or findings from related fields like developmental psychology, child psychology, educational philosophy etc.

Is it not possible that above two researches (from education next) trying to prove that the old style is better are just politically funded researches to calm down the parents and teacher communities demanding educational revolution ? Quite Possible !