Strengthening Education Research through Professional Development and a Trial Registry

Co-Principal Investigator: Rebecca Maynard (University of Pennsylvania) & Rob Greenwald (Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness)

In this project, researchers will develop a set of online professional development modules addressing methodological issues in education research and develop a registry of randomized trials in education. Both will serve to strengthen education research by adding transparency to the planning and conduct of research.

The professional development modules will be based on video recordings of past workshops and short courses offered by the Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness (SREE). The research team will iteratively develop the modules through piloting with past participants, attendees at SREE conferences, and fellows from predoctoral programs at Northwestern University and the University of Pennsylvania. Each module will address a methodological practice or issue pertinent to current education research and will combine the relevant video recording with PowerPoint slides, software input and output files, references to related materials, study guides, and assessments. Upon completion, the SREE website will have the modules available to the public.

The registry will establish a standard for protocols, as well as for protocol modifications, thereby helping to improve the rigor and quality of education research. The first step in the development of the registry will be to enter initial information on completed, ongoing, and new evaluations. The registry will then expand to collect updates on study designs for ongoing evaluations and results from those evaluations. The research team will work with: research funders to encourage grantees to register evaluations; the What Works Clearinghouse to obtain study information and requirements for meeting standards; and with professional societies and journals to encourage researchers to register their evaluations intended for eventual presentation or publication. Researchers will make the registry searchable and it will provide a tool for researchers to keep abreast of studies that are planned or are in progress, find instruments used in other studies, and obtain ideas about study design and methodology.