Replication studies

In the natural sciences, there is supposed* to be a tradition of replication, with results only being accepted once reproduced by other researchers. (*There is some scholarly debate about the extent to which replication actually occurs, even in natural science.)

Is replication even meaningful in social sciences such as education?

There are clearly major challenges in trying to ‘replicate’ educational studies in new settings.

“Although the use of controlled experiments has sometimes been seen as an ideal in science education, this is clearly not a realistic approach (leaving aside the ethics of treating human learners as experimental subjects) when dealing with learners studying in very different educational contexts where many “variables” are likely to be pertinent, interacting, and even shifting. This complicates, but does not negate the value of exploring students’ ideas to inform teaching [and many other topics!]

It is clearly the case that we are dealing with phenomena that are too complex to ever describe and understand fully, but there are—nonetheless—practical ways of developing useful knowledge, that fall within a generally postpositivist (i.e., “scientific,” [2]) approach to producing new knowledge.” (Taber, 2012: 7)

“However, differences between populations can only be considered significant where surveys are based upon

(i) methodology that is comparable;

(ii) sampling methods that can be considered to give representative findings.” (Taber, 2012: 8)

Taber, K. S. (2012). Vive la différence? Comparing ‘like with like’ in studies of learners’ ideas in diverse educational contexts. Educational Research International, 2012(Article 168741), 1-12. Retrieved from http://www.hindawi.com/journals/edu/2012/168741/ doi:10.1155/2012/168741

The nature of replication in education research is discussed in:

Taber, K. S. (2019). Experimental research into teaching innovations: responding to methodological and ethical challenges. Studies in Science Education. doi:10.1080/03057267.2019.1658058

Index of topics