Explain the importance of valid and reliable research in professional practice.

Write a 3–5 page critique of a research article and make a recommendation for application to professional practice.

Note: The assessments in this course build upon each other, so you are strongly encouraged to complete them in sequence.

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Education professionals rely on research in educational psychology to address daily problems in teaching, provide principles for decision-making, and guide the development of new programs and the evaluation of outcomes.

By successfully completing this assessment, you will demonstrate your proficiency in the following course competencies and assessment criteria:

Competency 2: Evaluate information sources and research designs that are used to answer research questions in educational psychology.

Explain the importance of valid and reliable research in professional practice.

Justify the appropriateness of a study’s design and methodology, based on topic and research questions.

Analyze the multiple perspectives provided in the article.

Evaluate the author’s credibility and authority.

Evaluate the creditability and authority of a research article.

Make a recommendation for professional practice, supported by current literature.

Competency 7: Communicate in a manner that is scholarly, professional, and consistent with university expectations for graduate education, including discipline knowledge and current APA formatting standards.

Write clearly and logically, with correct use of spelling, grammar, punctuation, and mechanics, and correctly format citations using APA style.

Educational inquiry is based on the scientific method, where one of its major goals is the collection of information based upon the objective and systematic observation of natural phenomena with an effort to achieve possible cause and effect relationships. The educational researcher should find it helpful to keep an open mind and endeavor to determine whether a convergence of findings exists by using alternative methodologies, such as quantitative, qualitative, or mixed methods.

To deepen your understanding, you are encouraged to consider the questions below and discuss them with a fellow learner, a work associate, an interested friend, or a member of the business community.

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What factors within a study should be evaluated to determine the quality of the study?

What criteria in a research study helps to determine validity and reliability?

How do you determine the credibility of a researcher?

What factors should you consider when evaluating the reliability of a source?

Preparation

Choose one of the library articles linked under the Required Resources heading for this assessment to critique.

As you critically read the research article, ask yourself these questions:

Why it is important to recognize high quality research in the educational psychology field?

Is the author credible? What prior work exists? What are the critiques of the work?

Is the journal or publisher well known?

Does the article present an opposing point of view on the topic?

Is the article peer reviewed?

You may benefit from examining the multimedia and library resources related to behavioral learning theory and evaluating research, linked in the Resources, before beginning this assessment.

Scenario

In the course of your professional work, you read a controversial article and are inspired to write a critique in response, for the magazine Education Week.

Deliverable

Write a response to submit to Education Week after critically evaluating one of the articles linked in the Required Resources. In your response:

Explain the importance of valid and reliable research to professional practice.

Justify the appropriateness of a study’s design and methodology, based on topic and research questions.

Analyze the multiple perspectives provided in the article.

Evaluate the author’s credibility and authority.

Evaluate the credibility and authority of a research article.

Make a recommendation for professional practice, supported by current literature.

Additional Requirements

Written communication: Writing is free of errors that detract from the overall message.

Length: 3–5 pages, not including the title or reference pages.

APA formatting: Resources and citations are formatted according to current APA manual style and formatting.

References: A critique of this length should include scholarly references. At the graduate level, you are responsible for determining the appropriate number of references. The majority of them should be original research articles published in peer-reviewed psychology journals (for example, those journals published by the APA). A few review or survey articles are also acceptable.

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