Couldn't agree more re paywalls  - interesting difference in that medics typically have access through Deaneries and there is no equivalent for teachers not doing University courses (although many are, particularly senior managers doing M.Eds and so on).

DSB

________________________________________
From: Paul Bivand [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 18 March 2013 12:11
To: BYRNE D.S.; [log in to unmask]
Subject: RE: Evidence Based Education

Well, a literature review of the evidence available to teachers seeking to identify what works would find absolutely nothing - it's all behind paywalls.

This is one of Goldacre's other pet bugbears - and is particularly important for a profession like teaching that needs to update its skills in the light of recent research, which has been hidden from them by publishers.

Paul

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-----Original Message-----
From: email list for Radical Statistics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of BYRNE D.S.
Sent: 18 March 2013 12:01
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Evidence Based Education

This is somewhat naive as usual with Goldacre when he gets on his hobbyhorse of RCTs. And by the way there are dozens of decent RCTs in Education already -  work done by Peter Tymms at Durham for example - a literature review might have been a good start. Look at his study of the impact of peer tutoring  which is a good RCT.



RCTs work when you can control context and there are not significant interaction effects (or emergence to use a word Goldacre doesn't like and doesn't seem to understand).  This can happen even in controlled class room contexts. The example I use when teaching students about RCTs is using different packages to teach basis statistics. We might assign randomly allocated classes to be taught using SPSS and MINITAB.  We then test on outcomes in terms of examination performance. HOWEVER, if we use even two way Analysis of Variance and use teacher as the other element, then we will find an interaction effect between teacher and package because teacher and package is the actual delivery system and how they work together is how things happen.



Goldacre recognizes context in his onward discussion but doesn't see how this operates because he doesn't engage with complex causality or equifinality (multipe causation). And by the way Medicine is beginning to move away from the RCT towards data mining as the basis for personalized medicine because the RCT tells you nothing about the individual case.



David Byrne

________________________________

From: email list for Radical Statistics [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of Elizabeth Hind [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 18 March 2013 11:32
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Evidence Based Education


There's a recent paper by Dr Ben Goldacre on using evidence from randomly controlled trials to gather evidence to improve education.


It's quite long, but there is a summary at the start. I'd be very interested to hear what RadStatters think of it. I've worked in Science education enrichment (still do part time) and we have tried to come up with a way of measuring the impact of what we do.

http://www.badscience.net/2013/03/heres-my-paper-on-evidence-and-teaching-for-the-education-minister/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter


Regards

Liz Hind

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