Understanding and Evaluating Educational Research

For courses in educational research for consumers. This practical research text/reader guides students in learning to become critical consumers by first understanding and then critiquing published research studies. It provides important principles for understanding and analyzing research reports on each major type of research. One of its unique attributes is the way each type of research is followed by examples of published studies that are critiqued by the authors. It introduces students to basic educational research concepts/methods and helps them become critical consumers by comprehending and assessing published research articles. Both qualitative and quantitative methods are included.

Table of Contents:
1. Introduction to Reading Educational Research. 2. Quantitative Nonexperimental Designs. Differing Opinions on Testing between Preservice and Inservice Teachers, Kathy E. Green. The Impact of Alternate Assessments: A Statewide Teacher Survey, Harold L. Kleinert, Sarah Kennedy, and Jacqueline Farmer Kearns. Classroom Teachers' and Music Specialists' Perceived Ability to Implement the National Standards for Music Education, Susan J. Byo. Relationship between Parents, Peers, Morality, and Theft in an Adolescent Sample, Beth Judy and Eileen Nelson. College Success of Students from Three High School Settings, Joe Sutton and Rhonda Galloway. 3. Quantitative Experimental Designs. Motivational Effects on Test Scores of Elementary Students, Steven M. Brown and Herbert J. Walberg. Effects of a Children's Book and a Traditional Textbook on Fifth-Grade Students' Achievement and Attitudes Toward Social Studies, C. Warren McKinney and H. Jon Jones. Effects of Cooperative Learning among Hispanic Students in Elementary Social Studies, Judith R. Lampe, Gene E. Rooze, and Mary Tallent-Runnels. Grade Distributions, Grading Procedures, and Students' Evaluations of Instructors: A Justice Perspective, Jasmine Tata. 4. Qualitative Designs. Building Bridges to Student Engagement: Communicating Respect and Care for Students in Urban High Schools, Donetta Cothran and Catherine D. Ennis. Rites of Passage among Women Reentering Higher Education, Nancy P. Redding and William D. Dowling. How Does the Textbook Contribute to Learning in a Middle School Science Class?, Marcy P. Driscoll, Mahnaz Moallem, Walter Dick, and Elizabeth Kirby. 5. Action/Practitioner Research. Effects of Curriculum Alignment Versus Direct Instruction on Urban Children, George Brent and Nicholas DiObilda. Improving the Grades of Student Athletes: A Study of Attitudes, Expectations, and Academic Performance, Henry Davis and Jim Guthrie.