Most welcome discussion for we two,too/also/additionally.

thanks, flowers, etcetera,

Any one read/reading Hattie.J.A.C. 2008. Visible Learning: a synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement. Oxford. Routledge, and can refer us to reviews/comments of same?

Most refreshing discussion…many thanks to all.

eustacia and myrtle – 23yrs. Primary teacher trainees…New Zealand.

I think we can read into Mark’s own comments that Promethean will continue to fund further self-aggrandizing research.

Questions about the meta-analytical research methodology and how the research should be interpreted were put to Marzano Research recently.

http://www.prometheanplanet.com/server.php?show=nav.19109

I must also clarify a couple of points made in this critique.

The report is freely available from the Marzano Research Website. This was not made clear in your comments.

http://www.marzanoresearch.com/documents/Preliminary%20Report%20on%20ActivClassroom.pdf

Also, it is characterised throughout as an “IWB study”. In fact every classroom involved was required to be using a Promethean learner response systems that was integrated with the board via Promethean software which made for a more sophisticated media mix.

Clearly much more still remains to be learned about effective use of technology in classrooms than is known. As the first in a series of studies – this research should beget further research and all comment and review is welcome and indeed essential.

Thanks for letting a vendor representative post.

Mark Robinson
Group Head of Education Product Strategy
Promethean

@Mike, I’m not familar with the Clark and Mayer book, but I’ll be sure to check it out. I don’t love that they consider instruction a science (at least in the title they do), but I won’t judge a book by its cover

@Joe, I’m not ready to write off Marzano’s entire body of work. That said, in response to your second question, yeah, I think this study is completely worthless. Also, while I agree that mixed methods inquiry is ideal, the order of the day is “student achievement.” Especially in tight budget times, if folks can’t tie their investments to student achievement, those investments will go away. Hence, the need to do research that way. Sad, but true.

@Ira – apropos of nothing, my favorite quote is “Educational research is like sausage. If you like to consume it, you don’t want to watch it being made.”

That said, I will agree re Slavin. Though I have torn apart his work for questions of combined effects and self-promotion (intentionally or not), you can read his papers and make the arguments against them coherently because he presents an actual research argument.

What Marzano has done here is assemble a random group of studies – many of which might be quite interesting as Action Research – and simply claimed that they collectively form a reasonsable data set.

I see this as the fault of a number of trends – the national push for numbers in things difficult to quantify, the need to promote one’s own work, insufficient “neutral” research funding, and the ease with which people are fooled by numbers.

As I say, “statistics are to education reform what the white coat is to the actor in hair growth commercials” or something like that.

Two questions hang out there for me:
1. Is this a problem with only this work or all of Marzano’s work? I think your suggesting it’s more than just this work.
2. Is this study completely worthless? I think not, I think it is completely preliminary. If the purpose of the research is purely to sell whiteboards, that’s one thing. The result of the research is to suggest that there may be something happening in classrooms that use interactive whiteboards that increases learning (very preliminary).

The little gem in the research that you didn’t mention is the flat line of achievement in 7th grade (even given what you said, there would still seem to be that flat line). Something happened there and it’s something that may be related to how IWB’s work in middle school environments vs. elem. or high school.

As far as this issue of “media research”, in fairness to this study, the IWB classrooms are interactive classrooms (ie. the IWB itself, clickers, slate tablet, plus the software for creating the IWB materials). That is a whole lot of media to be studying at once in a study.

Mike, When you look at media research you have to consider the media you are speaking of; is the media a kind of learning object (which you are inserting into instruction) or is it a tool you are integrating. Tool integration is much more difficult to measure b/c of the varieties of variation of practice.

I have to disagree with Jon’s statement that “I believe it would actually be reasonably easy to evaluate the impact of IWBs on student achievement.” The only way to do this is with both qualitative and quantitative measures. If they raise student achievement, what does that proof? You won’t know how they did it which means people couldn’t replicate this possible “best practice”, b/c you won’t know what exactly the best practice is. IWB aren’t a media object they are a “practice” that requires deep study.

The research question that should be asked is: “Which instructional strategies, procedures and activities best take advantage interactive classroom technologies?”

I use these technologies frequently. Geez, I have the Web resources, video resources, classroom response systems and software that allows the students to engage and interact with anything I project. That should be better than a copy of worksheet.

Thanks Jonathan, for opening this can of worms.