IN EDUCATION, RESEARCH IS NOTHING. RESULTS ARE EVERYTHING.
I suppose I'm to the point in my career where it's OK to say what those who know me best have long understood. When someone says the words 'education research' to me, I lose all interest in whatever they might have to say next. Educational research is good for a laugh among the people who are informed enough to get the joke, but that's about all it's good for.
RESEARCH IS WHERE RED-FACED ADMINISTRATORS HIDE WHEN THEIR EFFORTS PRODUCE NO RESULTS. ("GEE, WE DID IT JUST LIKE THE DIRECTIONS ON THE BOX SAID, BUT THE WHEELS ON MY NEW SUPER-SONIC BIKE STILL DON'T POINT THE SAME DIRECTION!")
RESEARCH IS FOR WINNING ARGUMENTS WHEN NEITHER REASON NOR COMMON SENSE NOR PAST PERFORMANCE ARE ADEQUATE TO JUSTIFY ONE'S POSITION.
RESEARCH IS FOR INTIMIDATING THOSE WHO MIGHT BE NAIVE ENOUGH TO FALL FOR IT AND WHO HAVEN'T READ THE RESEARCH THEMSELVES.
Of course it isn't always appropriate to laugh out loud, but then I'm not always limited in my responses to only those that are deemed appropriate. And sometimes it's just too funny. But not always.
Sometimes there is a kind of sadness associated with conversations about research. When the person is earnest. When that person does something related to education for a living. Perhaps it's a person with a lot of experience (or with one year's experience 20 times over, because nothing of significance seems to accumulate over time). When that person makes an appeal to research, it's truly sad. Especially if they do it in public. I try not to be in the room on such occasions. But even then, colleagues who don't see the tragedy find it humorous to pass relate the event...and of course I laugh along, and they never notice the sadness just around the edges of my eyes...
There's no research, for example, that 'proves' that multi-age practice increases student achievement. Still, it does. Why do I think so? Corbett's 10th graders who qualify as 'Economically Disadvantaged' have had an average passing rate of 81% in Reading over the past three years. They have never been as low as, say, 67%. And they have averaged 64% in 10th grade math, with their lowest year being 50%. They've never dropped as low as 45% in all that time. Why? They have come up through the grades in multi-age classrooms. And someone who wants to argue otherwise has a challenge that is greater than just Googling multi-age. They have to overcome the facts on the ground. (Maybe they could claim it's the self-contained 9th grade classrooms...which absolutely no research supports!)
Research is nothing. Research in the hands of those who have never produced any results is less. And it's sad. But in a funny way.
Results? They trump research. To produce results is to hold the trump card. Holding the trump card, always, is like always being 20 steps ahead...
