Education researchers typically want their work to be read widely. To make a broader and more meaningful impact on the public and on educational practice they often desire media attention. But do the media report on education research, especially high quality research that has been subject to strenuous peer review?
In new research, Holly Yettick of the Education Week Research Center describes how often news media cite evidence from education research that has undergone scientific peer review. She examined all news items that appeared during the first 6 months of 2010 in daily newspapers, online-only outlets, and Education Week. She also interviewed 33 writers who report on education for various news outlets.
What she found will disappoint most education researchers. In contrast to science or medical journalists, education journalists virtually never refer to peer-reviewed education research; nor do they utilize media-related resources provided by organizations like the American Educational Research Association (AERA). She concludes that “peer-reviewed academic education research and the AERA organization are barely a blip on the radar of American education reporting.”
Why is this true? Yettick argues that education researchers, especially those in universities, do far less than scholars in other disciplines to pro-actively seek out media coverage. She also notes that education research is relatively less well funded; tends to produce more complex results that defy concise explanation; is often perceived as largely subjective; and is scattered in more journals than in fields like medicine. She concludes with recommendations about how to improve this sad situation.
Read the full article here:
Yettick, Holly. “One Small Droplet: News Media Coverage of Peer-Reviewed and University-Based Education Research and Academic Expertise,” Educational Researcher, online March 3, 2015.
Comments 1
Doug Holton — April 1, 2015
No, to answer your question. Not many do read educational research, and that's true of all research articles.
Via http://www.psmag.com/books-and-culture/killing-pigs-weed-maps-mostly-unread-world-academic-papers-76733
"According to one study, which was presumably read by more than three people, half of all academic papers are read by no more than three people"
“as many as 50% of papers are never read by anyone other than their authors, referees and journal editors.” That same study concluded that “some 90% of papers that have been published in academic journals are never cited.”
One problem is that the articles are behind a paywall. The article you are referring to costs $30 to read.
But even if they were free and open access, the articles are not written for the public - they are written for reasons like getting tenure and promotions, getting prestige, getting grants.
Lastly, academics just stink at writing ( http://chronicle.com/article/Why-Academics-Writing-Stinks/148989/ ). Writing well is a difficult skill that takes years to develop, if it is ever truly "mastered" at all (just like teaching, programming, etc).
Two paths toward alleviating this problem might be 1) publishing research in open access venues with post (rather than pre) publication review and 2) educating journalists on things like interpreting educational research, statistics, research-based theories of learning and teaching, and the like. Basically making educational researchers more like journalists, and educational journalists more like researchers. Maybe in the future there will be little distinction between the two.