T Time: Ep. 11

Educational methods do not have to conflict with more concrete physical scientific methods, but such has not infrequently been the case. Social sciences like psychology and education have been the subject of inquiries regarding the so-called “replication crisis” yet there is often a sense that what happens in the field of education today is not only a far improvement from prior epochs but also somewhat of a silver-bullet for problems of the past. That is, educators at varied institutions seem to think themselves the arbiters of some higher sense of truth and virtue, which could be true, but we are finding sufficient reports suggesting there is error variance and disturbance in the models over time and across distances. Studies are seldom reproduced, and part of the reason is that no two people are ever alike let alone two classes or schools, but then we need to have a caveat attached to research studies declaring that “results may vary” or something like that. However, ambiguity does not inspire confidence, and the field of educational research often requires or at least prefers clarity and certainty in reporting…but to what end and at what cost? Are we sacrificing good science? Are we oversimplifying? Is there selection and exclusion of data over temporal and spatial boundaries? Popular conversation suggests that something is not quite right, but to what extent are higher-ranking professional educators seeking to remedy the incompleteness problem? If we want to have students who are good at science, then shouldn’t we also be advocating for scientific principles and scientific thinking? Maybe we would need to remove bias before we can have more comprehensive “truth”, but artificial or partial truth is not what’s being declared. To move systems of education back to - or toward for the first time - a scientific methodology, and a scientific understanding of students, performance, and DATA, we must have viewpoint diversity, more rational discourse, tolerance for other opinions and for ambiguity that is observable from secondary and third perspectives.