final project

This project is intended to help students gain experience thinking critically about research articles in their field by employing the concepts and analysis tools we have discussed in class.

1. Choose an article. http://educationnext.org/time-for-school/a.     You should find an article discussing an experiment or observational study that is published in a peer-reviewed journal.  If you are feeling especially ambitious, you can use an approved dissertation study, however, this is not recommended owing to complexity and length.

1. Avoid case studies.  Even for small studies, samples of larger than 10 students are desirable.  The trend in education research these days is qualitative or case study research.  Be aware that you may need to go back several years to find quantitative research with an appropriate level of statistics to analyze.
2. The article should be in the general field of education, and have some application to elementary education (even if the study itself was not done on primary school students).  Discussion of learning strategies are widely applicable to all learners.

2. Analysis.
3. Is the title of the article descriptive of the paper?   Is it “clickbait?  Describe the article and what statistical analysis was presented.
4. What kind of statistics is included in the article?  Measures of Center or Spread?  Graphs? Linear Regression?  Hypothesis Tests?  Are there some statistical tools employed that we did not cover? (If we didn’t cover them, do a Google search to see if you can determine when the test is used, for what kind of data, etc
5. Look at each of the components in turn.  Are the graphs good or bad?  Are they difficult to understand?  What are some potential concerns about their analysis?  Do any of them appear to run counter to common sense?
6. If the raw data is provided, are there any outliers that may be throwing off the analysis?  Can you construct a better graph of the data?  Can the analysis be repeated?
7. How sound is the conclusion of the article based on what you found?  Does it go too far?  Not far enough?
8. What further research could be done to solidify the conclusions the article makes (or conjectures about)?

3. Write up.
4. Aim for two pages, single-spaced, graphs included.  Longer is okay, but shorter than 2+ pages is not likely to have enough detail in the analysis.  Standard 12-point font, and 1” margins.  Alternatively, you may submit a PowerPoint presentation instead (aim for a minimum of 6 content slides (not including references and title slide).
5. Final versions will have some points dedicated to grammar, proper quotations, etc.
6. Cite your article and any other references in APA format.  There is a feature under the References tab that will make this much easier.
7. A cover page is not necessary for the written paper, and does not count toward the page count.