New Norms for Educational Research

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

Recent problems in disciplines such as psychology (e.g., the failure to replicate studies) have shaken public faith in scientific knowledge and catalyzed new research norms regarding optimal scientific practices. Whether and how educational researchers adopt (or ignore) these practices affects knowledge production, policy decisions, and educational practice in our interdisciplinary field. In this session, presenters discuss three research practices that they anticipate will be immediately important for educational researchers—pre-registering studies, registered reports, and assessing fidelity to treatment. The final presentation explores how these norms might affect our attempts to synthesize and apply scholarly knowledge. At the session’s end, we aim to spark a thoughtful conversation about best research practices within Division C and across education more generally.

Sub Unit

• Division C - Learning and Instruction / Division C - Section 2a: Cognitive and Motivational Processes

Cosponsor

• Division D - Measurement and Research Methodologies

Chair

• Hunter Gehlbach, University of California - Santa Barbara

Papers

• Mitigating Performance-Enhanced Data Through Preregistration in Education - Carly Dolan Robinson, Harvard University; Hunter Gehlbach, University of California - Santa Barbara

• Innovations in Scholarly Publishing: Registered Reports for Hypothesis-Driven Research - Justin Fire Reich, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Tim van der Zee, Leiden University

• A Framework for Incorporating Intervention Fidelity in Educational Evaluation Studies - Chris S. Hulleman, University of Virginia; William Madison Murrah, University of Virginia; Jeff John Kosovich, University of Virginia

• The Implications of New Norms in Education Research for Research Synthesis - Erika Alisha Patall, University of Southern California