Why apply science to classroom practice?
When a similar question was posed at a U.S. Department of Education (ED) Working Group Conference on the use of scientifically based research in education, presenter Valerie Reyna, senior research advisor at ED’s Institute of Education Sciences, offered a simple but thought-provoking response: “If you didn’t base practice on scientific research, what [would] you base it on?” (ED, 2002, p.5). The alternatives, Reyna suggested, are basing practice on tradition or on anecdotal evidence. Following tradition (as in “we do it this way because this is the way we have always done it”), although comforting, risks ignoring new realities or rapidly changing circumstances found in so many classrooms today. Relying on anecdotal evidence poses similar risks. The observations of even a seasoned teacher might in fact prove to be exceptions rather than the rule. As Reyna observed, “We know on the basis of experience that anecdotes have turned out to be false and misleading. Sometimes they are very repr
