EDUC 872

Course Details

  • EDUC 872: Social Science Research and Education Policy
  • Semester: Spring 2006
  • Professor: Dr. Penelope M. Earley
  • Syllabus

Assignments

Required Texts

  • Jones, W. & Kottler, J. (2006). Understanding research: becoming a competent
            and critical consumer. Pearson Education, Inc, Upper Saddle River, NJ.
  • Locke, L., Silverman, S., & Spirduso, W. (2004). Reading and Understanding
            Research (2nd Ed.). Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA.
  • McEwan, E. & McEwan, P. (2003). Making sense of research what’s good, what’s
            not, and how to tell the difference. Corwin Press (Sage Publications).
            Thousand Oaks, CA.

Additional Resources

Course Reflections

        The goal of this course was to train us to identify and critically review research for selected K-12 and higher education policy issues and through their analysis determine the strength of the undergirding evidence.  This course helped me achieve four goals: (a) become a competent consumer and critic of educational research; (b) work with a colleague as a team to investiage the research on a topic and present the findings as a team; (c) develop presentation skills; (d) get an exposure to several persistent, current, and emerging educational issues and develop a bibliography on those topics for potential future use.  I presented School Choice: Voucher Programs (ppt - team presentation), International Educational Comparisons (ppt), and Grade Retention: Does It Work? (ppt).  This was a course with very few reading assignments, however, it forced us to take the responsibility of both learning and teaching, and do a lot of reading and research on our own to prepare our presentations on selected topics.

        [Click here] to see the list of competencies achieved in this course.