June 2004 — Exclusive Series: SBR
Print this articleClick here to receive your FREE subscription to T.H.E. Journal
What Does SBR Mean for Education Technology?
Thus, it is incumbent upon educational policy-makers, technology publishers and educators to strike the appropriate balance between the need for sound effectiveness research and the "natural laws" of technology advancement. Indeed, SIIA was instrumental in ensuring that Title IID of NCLB did not have SBR requirements attached to it, precisely because we wanted to protect innovation, both in the development and in the school-based implementation of educational technologies.
School Participation. The logistics of conducting research in schools can be challenging to say the least. The demands of educational governance, research protocol and research design often create cumulative, and even contradictory, demands as well as increased costs, both in time and resources. For example, while SBR effectiveness research puts a premium on randomization, practical realities often make this very difficult. Parental denials of permission, perceptions that some students may be excluded from an instructional benefit, and school concerns with disruption to plans and schedules can all compromise the research design. Also, in the past, some educators have seen only the costs and potential harm from participation, and because they were not trained to conduct or rely upon research, they may not appreciate the benefits - direct or indirect.
While studies can often be designed to minimize these barriers, the fact remains that the educational culture - unlike, for example, health care and medicine - has not always been historically receptive to research participation. As a result, even well-intentioned developers may have difficulty finding school research partners. On the other hand, one of the acknowledged potential outcomes of the demands for SBR is that educators are becoming more research-savvy.
Fidelity of Implementation. As noted above, while not all technology is equal in its effects, a given application is neither intrinsically effective nor ineffective in improving education and achievement. Instead, even the most well-designed products and services must be implemented appropriately to accomplish their goals. Most important, educators must understand how to integrate technology as a tool to achieve educational objectives, including, in some cases, adopting a redefined model of the teacher's role and instruction. Professional development, school leadership, adequate technical support, properly configured hardware, appropriate pedagogy, systematic instructional use, recommended intensity of use, and other implementation factors are all inseparable from results. These conditions and practices have as much influence on outcomes as the technology and its design.
However, consistency of implementation is very difficult to maintain from one study setting to another. This is true for all school-based research, because most educational interventions depend to some, and often great, extent on implementation by the teacher, which is extremely difficult for the researcher to control. Most of education technology use d'es not consist of "teacher-proof" applications. Consequently, any study of technology's effectiveness must account for all the variables listed above - in both the study design and the reporting of its results.
