High quality research
At present, data publication is one of the most dynamic topics in e-Research. While the fundamental problems of electronic text publication have been solved in the past decade, standards for the external and internal organisation of data repositories are advanced in some research disciplines but underdeveloped in others. We discuss the differences between an electronic text publication and a data publication and the challenges that result from these differences for the data publication process. We place the data publication process in the context of the human knowledge spiral and discuss key factors for the successful acquisition of research data from the point of view of a data repository. For the relevant activities of the publication process, we list some of the measures and best practices of successful data repositories. In the research community the culture of conveying knowledge by publishing papers has a long tradition, and in the last decade digital text publication has been fully established.
Standards of a Quality Research
Book Education. Download PDF. Teacher quality matters. In fact, it is the most important school-related factor influencing student achievement.
Given the size of this investment, there is remarkably little research to guide such critical decisions as whom to hire, retain, and promote. In the absence of a strong, robust, and deep body of research, the debate in this field is largely ideological. This analysis reviews a wide range of empirical studies that examine the impact of teacher characteristics on teacher effectiveness in order to draw conclusions about the extent to which these characteristics are, in fact, linked with teacher performance.
Greater clarity on the empirical evidence can inform the wisdom of current practice, guide state efforts as they struggle with No Child Left Behind compliance regarding teacher quality, and provide direction for future teacher policy decisions. For example, developing an approach to policy that values different and multiple teacher characteristics based on the research evidence may prove promising.
It is important to note that many personal characteristics important for a good teacher are not measured in the studies reviewed. The focus is on aspects of teacher background that can be translated into policy recommendations and incorporated into teaching practice.
The framework for this study includes five broad categories of measurable and policy-relevant indicators to organize the teacher characteristics assumed to reflect teacher quality. It is notable that findings for these characteristics frequently differ for teachers at the elementary school level and teachers at the high school level and that the body of research on the subject of teacher quality suggests that the context of teaching matters e.
A refined understanding of how teacher attributes affect their performance across these different teaching contexts can be helpful in determining the range of potentially effective policy options.
This may partially be a reflection of the cognitive ability of the teacher. Given that many dimensions of teacher characteristics matter—preparation in both pedagogic and subject content, credentials, experience, and test scores—the findings from the literature imply that there is no merit in large-scale elimination of all credentialing requirements. Nor are improvements in teacher quality likely to be realized through the status quo.
Rather, teacher policies need to reflect the reality that teaching is a complex activity that is influenced by the many elements of teacher quality. Most of the research does not seek to capture interactions among the multiple dimensions of teacher quality, and as a result, there are major gaps in the research that still need to be explored. Nor does the research fully address evidence about teacher quality at the elementary and middle school levels, in subjects other than mathematics, or among different populations of students such as high poverty, English language learners, or special education.
In opposition to those who propose to eliminate all requirements for entering the teaching profession, this analysis supports a judicious use of the research evidence on teacher characteristics and teacher effectiveness. The evidence indicates that neither an extreme centralized bureaucratization nor a complete deregulation of teacher requirements is a wise approach for improving teacher quality. What holds a great deal more promise is refining the policies and practices employed to build a qualified body of teachers in elementary schools, middle schools, and high schools; for disadvantaged, special needs, and advantaged students; and for math, science, languages, English, social studies, and the arts.
Education policy makers and administrators would be well served by recognizing the complexity of the issue and adopting multiple measures along many dimensions to support existing teachers and to attract and hire new, highly qualified teachers. The research suggests that investing in teachers can make a difference in student achievement. In order to implement needed policies associated with staffing every classroom—even the most challenging ones—with high-quality teachers, substantial and targeted investments must first be made in both teacher quality and education research.
Are qualified teachers really quality teachers? Likewise, are hiring and compensation policies that reward certain qualifications the equivalent of investing in teacher quality? Does hiring and retaining qualified teachers lead to improvements in student achievement? Researchers and policy makers agree that teacher quality is a pivotal policy issue in education reform, particularly given the proportion of education dollars devoted to teacher compensation coupled with the evidence that teachers are the most important school-related factor affecting student achievement.
However, considerable disagreement surrounds what specific teacher attributes indicate quality and how to better invest resources to provide quality teachers for all students. This review examines empirical evidence on the relationship between teacher attributes and teacher effectiveness with the goal of informing federal, state, and local teacher policy. Education is the compilation and product of many and varied resources.
Among these, teachers stand out as a key to realizing the high standards that are increasingly emphasized in schools and school systems across the country. Despite general agreement about the importance of high-quality teachers, researchers, practitioners, policy makers, and the public have been unable to reach a consensus about what specific qualities and characteristics make a good teacher.
Even more concerning is the array of policy statements regarding teacher preparation that have been set forth in the face of volumes of inconclusive and inconsistent evidence about what teacher attributes really contribute to desired educational outcomes. Policy makers are left with questions surrounding what counts as a quality teacher—information that could be valuable in guiding policies regarding whom to hire, whom to reward, and how best to distribute teachers across schools and classrooms.
Answers to these questions have potentially important implications for the efficiency and equity of public education. The intense interest in teacher policy is motivated by several compelling factors. One factor relates to the high proportion of educational dollars devoted to teacher compensation.
The single largest category of educational spending is devoted to the purchase of teacher time. Further, in their analysis of spending in the New York City public school system, Speakman et al. This high level of investment mirrors the general sentiment among policy makers, researchers, and the general public that teachers are perhaps the most valuable resource allocated to student education. Further, the enhancement of teacher quality is likely to be quite costly.
Increases in teacher salaries, incentives such as loan-forgiveness programs, heightened teacher preparation requirements, and other efforts to prepare, recruit, and retain high-quality teachers are all associated with substantial costs. These costs could be managed by targeting specific areas of need where teacher shortages are most pronounced, such as particular subject areas e.
Nevertheless, a clear sense of which teacher attributes really lead to improved educational outcomes should guide these important investment decisions, particularly given the many competing policy options to enhance teacher quality, as well as other attractive education policy proposals. In a context of limited resources, difficult policy choices must be made, and solid evidence should be used to guide those decisions.
The willingness of policy makers and taxpayers to devote such a large proportion of education dollars to teachers highlights the undisputed importance of teachers in realizing educational goals. A number of researchers have argued that teacher quality is a powerful predictor of student performance.
In contrast to the approach used by Darling-Hammond, which equates teacher quality with specific qualifications, Rivkin, Hanushek, and Kain identify teacher quality in terms of student performance outcomes. They conclude from their analysis of , students in 3, schools that, while school quality is an important determinant of student achievement, the most important predictor is teacher quality.
In comparison, class size, teacher education, and teacher experience play a small role. Hanushek estimates that the difference between having a good teacher and having a bad teacher can exceed one grade-level equivalent in annual achievement growth. Likewise, Sanders and Sanders and Rivers argue that the single most important factor affecting student achievement is teachers, and the effects of teachers on student achievement are both additive and cumulative.
Further, they contend that lower achieving students are the most likely to benefit from increases in teacher effectiveness. Taken together, these multiple sources of evidence—however different in nature—all conclude that quality teachers are a critical determinant of student achievement. In the current policy climate of standards-based reform, these findings make a strong case for gaining a better understanding of what really accounts for these effects.
In other words, what is teacher quality? The resource-intensive nature of teachers coupled with the empirical evidence documenting the critical role of teacher quality in realizing student achievement implies that teacher policy is a promising avenue toward better realizing goals of efficiency, equity, and adequacy in public education.
Indeed, recommendations for reforming the preparation of teachers have become commonplace in reports aimed at improving public education Bush Likewise, the Holmes Group advised that all major universities with substantial enrollments of preservice teachers i.
The recent federal education legislation, No Child Left Behind NCLB , further underlines the importance of having a high-quality teacher in every classroom in every school. The purpose of this analysis is to review existing empirical evidence to draw conclusions about the specific characteristics that are linked with teacher performance. Greater clarity on the empirical evidence regarding teacher quality can inform the wisdom of current practice, guide state efforts in the struggle with NCLB compliance regarding teachers, and provide direction for future teacher policy.
In the context of this intense activity surrounding teacher policy, it makes sense to turn to the existing evidence on which teacher attributes are related to teacher effectiveness in order to guide policy decisions about hiring, compensation, and distribution with respect to teachers. However, the literature on teacher quality and qualifications has typically been viewed as inconsistent and inconclusive.
Much of this perception has been fueled by a set of analyses conducted by Eric Hanushek over the past two decades. In his meta-analysis of studies examining the impact of several key educational resources on student achievement, Hanushek , , , concluded that there is no systematic relationship between educational inputs and student performance.
In addition, Hanushek included 41 estimates of the impact of teacher test scores on student outcomes. Krueger argues that this approach weights the various studies by the number of different estimates of the effect of a particular variable they include.
Further, he contends that studies that report negative or statistically insignificant findings are more likely to include more estimates than those that find statistically significant positive effects.
On one hand, this set of studies could be argued to be too inclusive in the sense that even those studies that simply included an educational resource as a control variable might be inappropriately considered e.
On the other hand, the production function literature could be contested as too exclusive in the sense that other methodological approaches, particularly those that allow the researcher to focus on more refined measures of what teachers know and can do, can also make valuable contributions to what we know about the value of educational resources.
In contrast to the work of Hanushek and others who have looked at specific subgroups of studies see, for example, Mayer, Mullens, Moore, and Ralph ; Wayne and Youngs ; Whitehurst , the literature review presented here represents an analysis of a wide variety of empirical studies examining the impact of teacher attributes on teacher performance. The approach taken here is similar to that used by Wilson, Floden, and Ferrini-Mundy in their review of the research on teacher preparation conducted for the U.
Department of Education. Empirical studies that conform to a variety of accepted methodological approaches and use a range of measures of teacher effectiveness are used to ascertain what existing evidence says about the relationship between teacher attributes and their performance. In addition, this approach pays close attention to a number of contextual factors e. Clearly, the context of teaching is important and may affect the impact of the teacher attributes considered in this analysis.
In fact, when existing studies are considered as a whole without breaking them down by contextual factors such as subject area or grade level , findings tend to be inconsistent across studies; context variables may help to explain the apparent inconsistency of the existing research.
In other words, a particular teacher attribute e. This careful attention to the context of teaching, wherever possible, helps to tease out some effects that would otherwise go undetected in reviews that neglect to consider these factors. The goal of this study is to sort through the available evidence to draw conclusions about what matters, what has been studied but has not been shown to matter, and what has not been adequately studied.
In the face of such seemingly inco nsistent and inconclusive evidence, policy makers are side-stepping the research or relying only on those studies that support their positions to move forward with teacher policies, often without the benefit of research to guide their efforts. However, research can, and should, play a role in these decisions.
For instance, numerous measures of what a teacher knows and can do have been routinely assumed to be important at least as indicated through hiring strategies, salary schedules, and teacher reform agendas. However, questions continue to persist about what exactly a quality teacher is. In other words, what teacher characteristics have been found to predict teacher effectiveness?
This is a fundamental question that must precede policy discussions concerning what kinds of teacher qualities and qualifications to promote in aspiring teachers, whom to recruit and hire, what factors to use in setting salary schedules, and how to distribute teachers across different types of schools and classrooms to achieve equity and adequacy goals. This analysis examines the existing empirical literature on the relationship between teacher attributes and their effectiveness with the goal of informing policy on investing in teacher quality.
The next chapter describes the methodology used to review the literature on the relationship between teacher characteristics and their performance, and the chapter that follows presents the findings from this literature review. The final chapter concludes with a discussion of the implications of these findings for future research and policy.
The NCES information is based on projected or preliminary data. Of course, to the degree that reduced class sizes, overall educational spending, and teacher salaries are related to teacher quality, these can be viewed as investments in teacher quality, albeit indirect. Rivkin, Hanushek, and Kain identify teachers as a major determinant of student performance, but do not describe teacher quality in terms of specific qualifications and characteristics.
They show strong, systematic differences in expected achievement gains related to different teachers using a variance-components model. In contrast to many of the policy recommendations for stricter teacher qualifications, the Abell Foundation has recently released a report calling for the elimination of statewide coursework and certification requirements for teachers in favor of more flexible professional requirements Abell Foundation Likewise, Hess argues for the deregulation of teacher preparation.
High Quality Research. SURVEYS AND QUESTIONNAIRES. Definition: A survey or questionnaire is a non-experimental, opinion-based research method. For more than 60 years, the name RAND has been synonymous with high-quality, objective research and analysis on issues at the top of the national and.
The quality of social science and policy research can vary considerably. It is important that consumers of research keep this in mind when reading the findings from a research study or when considering whether or not to use data from a research study for secondary analysis. This section includes information and tools to help evaluate the quality of a research study. It also includes information on the ethics of research. Peer reviewed research studies have already been evaluated by experienced researchers with relevant expertise.
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The quality of a research paper depends primarily on the quality of the research study it reports. However, there is also much that authors can do to maximise the clarity and usefulness of their papers. Journals' instructions for authors often focus on the format, style, and length of articles but do not always emphasise the need to clearly explain the work's science and ethics: so this review reminds researchers that transparency is important too.
Assessing Research Quality
Research comes in many shapes and forms. Without trying to summarise the vast published literature on the nature, quality, conduct and uses of research, we note key points that research users should have in mind when faced with a new report or article. We have in mind research with children, although other populations may also be studied. Good quality research provides evidence that is robust, ethical, stands up to scrutiny and can be used to inform policy making. It should adhere to principles of professionalism, transparency, accountability and auditability.
High-Quality Research
Principles and standards for quality research designs are commonly found in texts, reports, essays, and guides to research design and methodology and so on. In addition, quality assessment play many important roles in the research community. It enlightens crucial decisions on the funding of projects, teams and whole institutions, on how research is conducted, on recruitment and promotion, on what is published or disseminated, and on what researchers and others choose to read. It makes trust in the work of the research community. Quality is of course not a straightforward concept. The Oxford English Dictionary OED defines it as the nature or standard of something as measured against other things of a similar kind, and especially the degree of excellence it possesses. Research investigates ideas and uncovers useful knowledge. But research can be abused through bad assessing of research work. So, there are guidelines for standards for research quality.
Brian M.
Book Education. Download PDF. Teacher quality matters. In fact, it is the most important school-related factor influencing student achievement.
Top 10 Qualities of Good Academic Research
Faculty, Chairs, Directors, Deans, and others often ask some version of the question: what defines quality in research and creative activity? It is also critically important for OU as a public institution to be able to communicate the value and impact of scholarship in its diverse forms to a wide audience, within and beyond the University. This document is meant to serve as a shared guide for members of the OU community to begin to define the characteristics of quality research that can be applied in a wide variety of circumstances, ranging from individual faculty and department evaluations to assessment of potential hires and identification of faculty to be nominated for prestigious national awards. Measures of quality research are always influenced by metrics that are discipline specific; for some disciplines, certain categories and metrics within them will be far more important than others. Moreover, these criteria of quality research manifest themselves at different stages, and in various ways, in the life-cycle of research. The literature and sources included at the end of this document provide insight into the importance of and the challenges to defining characteristics of quality research. These sources caution against narrowly defining metrics and emphasize identifying opportunities to value a variety of activities in the process of defining quality research. The broad definitions of the characteristics below are meant to appeal to all disciplines. Discussions within and sharing effective practices with metrics and measures across disciplines are recommended ongoing steps in the process of defining quality research at the University of Oklahoma. All research requires resources, ranging from faculty salary to external funding to networks and partners. In many disciplines, internal or external funding provides both validation of the potential impact of research and essential resources to carry out a plan of research. In general, the more competitive the funding process, the more meaningful the validation. However, financial resources are not the only possible resources that contribute to quality research. Built infrastructure, human capital, and collaborative networks are examples of essential assets for successful and quality research and scholarship programs. These assets often need the support of financial resources, but strategically building, connecting and sustaining these resources are vitally important as well to supporting quality research.
What Makes a High Quality Clinical Research Paper?
Academic Research is defined as a process of collecting, analyzing and interpreting information to answer questions or solve a problem. But to qualify as good research, the process must have certain characteristics and properties: it must, as far as possible, be controlled, rigorous, systematic, valid and verifiable, empirical and critical. The main characteristics for good quality research is listed below:. The main characteristics for good quality research is listed below: It is based on the work of others. It can be replicated and doable. It is generalisable to other settings. It is based on some logical rationale and tied to theory. In a way that it has the potential to suggest directions for future research. It generates new questions or is cyclical in nature.
