[Maths-Education] Re: ICT in mathematics

[Alan Rogerson]

Dear Dylan,

What you say below does not in any way alter the fact that what you 
actually recommended to Sarah were reports on a webpage produced by a 
commercial company. That is the problem. You say something is "one of 
the best researched" but we need to know when and by whom? It is not the 
quantity of research that counts, rather its quality.

Please note, I am not making any judgement about the actual research 
which you call "original" nor did I say that this research is some how 
invalidated by being used by a commercial company. Let's say for the 
sake of argument, that  all this research could be validated, and also 
note that some of the reports on the Carnegie.inc webpage were (as we 
know) from Carnegie Mellon University itself, and may have even 
pre-dated the formation of Carnegie.inc, I do hope you can see that this 
does not change the problem? "Selective quotation" is still a real 
hazard, what company after all will quote research critical of its own 
products?

We know only too well the much bigger and much more serious debate going 
on about so-called academic research being funded, or supported, (or of 
course suppressed!) by drug companies. Companies are in business to make 
money, so we can hardly use them, or the reports they quote, as 
objective exemplars of "research". The contrast is between reports which 
clearly have no such bias, and those which are at risk of being biassed. 
Surely we cannot say "third party evaluations... would be better", 
surely you mean essential? We know from basic statistics that biassed 
evidence, when we can  not attach boundaries to the bias, , is, and must 
be, useless (not second best). We all know the story of the millions of 
telephone calls surveyed  that failed to predict the next President of 
the USA....?

Please also note that there is absolutely no bias (or specific 
accusations) against Carnegie.inc in particular here, it is a purely 
general point that is being made.

The only remaining problem, and somewhat insoluble, is the one Douglas 
Butler has just mentioned.

C'est la vie, c'est la ICT.

Best wishes,
Alan




On 04/03/2011 15:52, dylanwiliam at mac.com wrote:
> Alan: Sarah asked specifically for studies that showed the impact of ICT on attainment, and the Cognitive Tutor is one of the best researched pieces of software for mathematics education.  While Carnegie Learning is a commercial company that has taken over marketing and distribution of the products generated by the people who developed the Cognitive Tutor, the research itself is very solid (and much of it dates from before Carnegie Learning became involved). I agree that third party evaluations, such as those undertaken by Mathematica, would be better, and of course educationalists should evaluate the merits of the studies, but the fact that the research is now being used to support a commercial enterprise does not invalidate the original findings.
>
> Dylan