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> consider it an ethics violation to use a control group, the logic being that in denying your experimental method to the control group you're putting them at a

> consider it an ethics violation to use a control group, the logic being that in denying your experimental method to the control group you're putting them at a disadvantage. Oh man. Someone should tell them about double-blind clinical trials for cancer treatment. (Those can be, and sometimes are, "stopped for efficiency", when a midway evaluation shows the treatment is so effective that they already have a statistically significant result. They then start giving the treatment to both groups, I believe.)

a-priori 11y ago
I know, right? When my wife mentioned this, that was the first thing I said: there are plenty of fields where the research has life-or-death consequences and they use control groups. Education, by comparison, is low stakes. In medical research they have procedures and statistical techniques to detect significant results and allow for early stoppage. There's no reason the same techniques couldn't be applied to education research. But you need control groups, or you don't actually know that you've made an improvement!
- theseatoms 11y ago
  > But you need control groups, or you don't actually know that you've made an improvement! Exactly. You're disadvantaging all current and future students by NOT having a control group. </circlejerk>
dexwiz 11y ago
But in medicine starting treatment doesn't have to correspond with a calendar event. A 'dose' of education is much larger. It would be very difficult to switch curriculum mid semester, because one is getting better results at the midterm. Talking to teachers, one of the biggest complaints with the last decade of education reforms, is that they have to redo their curriculum every year. Not only what they are teaching changes, but how they are evaluated. Everyone knows that education is broken, and "has a plan to fix it". But their plan is just a new set of arbitrary requirements. They rarely let a system evolve naturally, and instead opt for a yearly rewrite. Its a huge bureaucratic burden that's constantly changing. The IT equivalent would be you need a minimum of 6 hours of training each time a library you use releases an update. The update may require you to use a new language. Using the most up to date version is required by law.
austinjp 11y ago
Yup. There are plenty of other trial designs that circumvent the (perfectly valid) objection to control groups being denied treatment. For example, both groups could receive the intervention, just not at the same time. While one group waits the other receives the intervention. The waiting group may be considered a "control". After this period of the trial completes, the waiting group is given the active treatment.

a-priori 11y ago

I know, right? When my wife mentioned this, that was the first thing I said: there are plenty of fields where the research has life-or-death consequences and they use control groups. Education, by comparison, is low stakes. In medical research they have procedures and statistical techniques to detect significant results and allow for early stoppage. There's no reason the same techniques couldn't be applied to education research. But you need control groups, or you don't actually know that you've made an improvement!

theseatoms 11y ago
> But you need control groups, or you don't actually know that you've made an improvement! Exactly. You're disadvantaging all current and future students by NOT having a control group. </circlejerk>

dexwiz 11y ago

But in medicine starting treatment doesn't have to correspond with a calendar event. A 'dose' of education is much larger. It would be very difficult to switch curriculum mid semester, because one is getting better results at the midterm. Talking to teachers, one of the biggest complaints with the last decade of education reforms, is that they have to redo their curriculum every year. Not only what they are teaching changes, but how they are evaluated. Everyone knows that education is broken, and "has a plan to fix it". But their plan is just a new set of arbitrary requirements. They rarely let a system evolve naturally, and instead opt for a yearly rewrite. Its a huge bureaucratic burden that's constantly changing. The IT equivalent would be you need a minimum of 6 hours of training each time a library you use releases an update. The update may require you to use a new language. Using the most up to date version is required by law.

austinjp 11y ago

Yup. There are plenty of other trial designs that circumvent the (perfectly valid) objection to control groups being denied treatment. For example, both groups could receive the intervention, just not at the same time. While one group waits the other receives the intervention. The waiting group may be considered a "control". After this period of the trial completes, the waiting group is given the active treatment.