It's Analysis Time for Your Experimental Study and There is No Significant Effect, Now What?
Description
Download Presentation SlidesSee Related Paper"Following a finding of null results in a randomized trial, researchers frequently resign themselves to negative outcomes -- for the program developers, the schools, teachers and students who participated in the study, and for their own CV. This webinar will address steps that researchers can take to investigate and understand a null result and describe how our group investigated null results from a randomized trial of the Math Solutions professional development program following Lemons, Fuchs, Gilbert & Fuchs (2014) approach. Using this approach we drew five hypotheses from the literature on program implementation, and evaluated each hypothesis against evidence collected during our three-year study. Evidence appears to support three hypotheses in particular: that the classroom instruction desired by program was extraordinarily complex and thus difficult for teachers to enact; that features of the district environment mitigated against full implementation by teachers; and that the program itself did not adequately address the weaknesses in mathematics teaching observed in the district."