A National Research Council report, "Scientific Research in Education," has elicited considerable criticism from the education research community, but this criticism has not focused on a key assumption of the report--its Humean, regularity conception of causality. It is argued that this conception, which also underlies other arguments for…

This paper delineates the distinctive facets of the research university and further explores the features of scientific research. On this basis, it is established that the mission of the research university is to achieve knowledge creation and academic advances. With a comparison of the organizational framework between the general university and…

This article reports how an "Education Week" review of hundreds of e-mail exchanges that detail a pattern of federal interference in "Reading First" have skirted legal prohibitions. In regular e-mail discussions, Christopher J. Doherty, the Reading First director at the U.S. Department of Education until last September, and G. Reid Lyon, a branch…

The absence of a central database and use of specialized language hinder nonexperts in becoming familiar with the science teaching and learning literature and using it to inform their work. The challenge of locating articles related to a specific question or problem, coupled with the difficulty of comprehending findings based on a variety of…

In the USA there is a contemporary discourse of crisis about the state of education and a parallel discourse that lays a large portion of the blame onto the poor quality of educational research. The solution offered is "scientific research." This article presents critiques of the core assumptions of the scientific research as secure argument.…

Use science to improve teaching. This idea has surfaced repeatedly in education literature since the passage of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), where the term "scientifically based research" appears more than 100 times. Yet despite all the attention that has been given to the idea of applying science in the classroom, principals and teachers often…

With the increased professional interest in nursing research, it is important for nursing administrators to be precise in their thinking. In this article, the authors define science and distinguish it from other bases of knowledge. This is done to help avoid conceptual and semantic errors. (Author)

Analysis of the Journal of the American Association of Teacher Educators in Agriculture in 1986 and 1987 revealed that 84 percent of the articles were quantitative and 13 percent qualitative research. The positivistic approach dominates. However, other valid approaches are interpretive research and critical science, based on critical social…

A research involving cognitive theory, and the pattern of multimedia information is discussed. The research has produced eight provisional rules for the multimedia approach, and indicates how cognitive science helps in generating information, while instructional research strengthens the concepts of cognitive science.

In this response to Scientific Research in Education (National Research Council, 2002), I argue that the report has provided us with a carefully considered but partial vision of social science that limits the capacity of our field to engage in critical self-reflection. As one counterexample to the vision of social science portrayed in the report,…

The demand for evidence-based research (EBR) in education has evoked considerable debate regarding the nature of knowledge practitioners hold, how they come to know, and the sociopolitical contexts in which that knowledge is generated. Proponents of EBR such as Michael Feuer stress the need for research that validly identifies solutions to…

This report explores the scope and limitations of the use of citations of published works as measures of the influential productivity of scientists, and suggests that publication citations be utilized for educational research. The Science Citation Index is a list of references (cited works), each of which is followed by a list of the sources…

This guide is designed to provide summary information about support programs of the National Science Foundation, and is intended as a source of general guidance for institutions and individuals interested in participating in these programs. Program listings describe the principal characteristics and basic purpose of each activity, eligibility…

A qualitative analysis of 80 scholarly journals and data on doctoral degrees in home economics in the 1970s and 1980s shows increased recognition of and commitment to research and scholarship in the continued development of the profession. (SK)

Uses Plato's "Meno" paradox to support the conclusion that atheoretical science is impossible. Argues that theory provides the foreknowledge of the objects of inquiry that makes it possible to recognize what one is looking for. Considers attempts at atheoretical inquiry to be bad science. (DMM)