ED472835 - The Logic and the Basic Principles of Scientific Based Research - ERIC-ED472835 | Content Details

ED472835 - The Logic and the Basic Principles of Scientific Based Research

Sponsoring Agency: National Educational Research Policy and Priorities Board (ED/OERI), Washington, DC

Subject: Educational Improvement, Educational Research, Inquiry, Research Methodology, Scientific Enterprise

Identifiers: Empirical Research, No Child Left Behind Act 2001, Office of Educational Research and Improvement, Principles Approach, Research Quality

Abstract: A study was sponsored by the U . S . National Educational Research Policy and Priorities Board of the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI) amid the enthusiasm for bringing the power of rigorous, objective, scientific understanding to bear on improving decisions about educational programming and thus student achievement. There is controversy and lack of consensus about what it actually means for something to be based on "scientific research" in education. Although this paper does not talk about the findings related to the research agency, it adopts a forward-looking approach: describing the enterprise in the ideal and highlighting its successes. The paper offers no hard-and-fast definition of what constitutes scientific research in education and states that there will rarely be any one study that should be taken as the definitive "answer" to questions about education. It outlines and explains the following six principles of scientific inquiry: (1) Pose significant questions that can be investigated empirically; (2) Link research to theory; (3) Use methods that permit direct investigation of questions; (4) Provide coherent chain of rigorous reasoning; (5) Replicate and generalize; and (6) Transparency and scholarly debate. The paper notes that education research is most closely associated with the social and behavioral sciences, and it provides some information on the special characteristics of education research.