This week while I was reading in the Kindle Application I pulled up other popular highlights from the text. Since I have been job searching I did not have enough to read every word of these two very long chapters. So, I used the popular highlights and read as much as I could. The highlights were useful and helpful to my spread-thin self.
This week’s readings were from Christensen’s text: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns, chapters 8 & 9. Chapter 8 discusses a point that I am very passionate on: practicality of research for the betterment of the education system, and whether or not teaching is an art or a science. Christensen states that many teachers are easily frustrated at the validity of research and the lack of a control basis where all classrooms are applicable. After observing, classifying, and then defining relationships the research can be studied prescriptively or descriptively.
Christensen states that, “prescriptive research built upon well-researched categories of circumstances can allow administrators and teachers to predict what actions will lead to the desired result given the circumstance in which they find themselves—and thus know what they ought to do” (3275) instead of straight-forward descriptive research that leaves the teacher with no detail more than the end results. Another statement that Christiansen makes is that when there is an anomaly in prescriptive research then that should leave room for interest in what made the program work for those it did and what in the program didn’t work for the others, instead of leaving the results as simply “research findings” and dropping the questions that arise from the research. It seems that frustration runs deep in educational research because the control groups can not be applicable to all classrooms. So, what is good for one is not good for another. Frustration also arises because most of the educational research is stopped short and does not continue. Research is a science, not an art, states Christensen, because, although education is unique in some ways, it is still measureable and can be tested; if the research is able to be finished then many people in the education world might have a different attitude with research findings. Maybe researchers will be able to find applicable prescriptive research that teachers can take and make applicable to every classroom.