The Need for Randomised Controlled Trials in Educational Research

By C. Torgerson, David J. Torgerson. 2001

183 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This paper argues for more randomised controlled trials in educational research. Educational researchers have largely abandoned the methodology they helped to pioneer. This gold-standard methodology should be more widely used as it is an appropriate and robust research technique. Without subjecting curriculum innovations to a RCT then potentially harmful educational initiatives could be visited upon the nation's children.

Subfields: Education, Safety Research

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0f706d680fe78fb7e4fa8ffcf18480f5cb402182

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Education

1. Anthony E. Kelly
2. John Y. Baek
3. Richard A. Lesh
4. Sylvia D. Hogarth
5. J. Bennett
6. Michael Wigelsworth
7. N. Humphrey
8. Ann Lendrum

In Safety Research

1. J. Bennett
2. N. Humphrey
3. Ann Lendrum
4. F. Lubben

Citations in the corpus

• Context‐based Chemistry: The Salters approach (2006, methodology): “For some (e.g., Hargreaves, 1996; Torgerson & Torgerson, 2001), the use of experimental techniques (and, in particular, randomized controlled trials) is seen as the only way of providing hard evidence of better outcomes.”
• Bringing science to life: A synthesis of the research evidence on the effects of context‐based and STS approaches to science teaching (2007, background): “…quality assessment has tended to favor experimental studies as providing more rigor (Borman, 2002), in particular the RCTs which have been advocated as the “gold standard” in research literature (Torgerson & Torgerson, 2001) and in guidelines for practitioners (U.S. Department of Education, 2003).”
• Handbook Of Design Research Methods In Education: Innovations In Science, Technology, Engineering, And Mathematics Learning And Teaching (2018, background): “Although researchers in this group acknowledge the utility of multiple research methods, they make their strongest case for the virtues of experimentation, preferably with randomized, controlled designs (Cook, 2000; Torgerson, 2001).”
• The importance of studying the implementation of interventions in school settings (2012, background): “…trials (RCTs)——to demonstrate the efficacy of school-based programmes as a bare minimum before they are launched nationally (Tymms et al., 2008; Torgerson & Torgerson, 2001). works’ in education (Biesta, 2007) and it may be argued that there is limited utility in an ‘evidence-base’ that…”
• Social and emotional aspects of learning (SEAL) programme in secondary schools: national evaluation (2010, result): “Such an approach would be in line with recommendations made by experts such as Tymms, Merrell and Coe (2008) and Torgeson and Torgeson (2001), and would increase the credibility of programmes such as secondary SEAL since the version rolled out on a national level would have been refined on the basis”