Practicing Research: Discovering Evidence That Matters

Practicing Research: Discovering Evidence That Matters provides research consumers with the skills necessary for discovering evidence that matters.This book is designed for students, practitioners or researchers who are planning to review research for best practices or are actually selecting programs right now. Author Arlene Fink assumes that each person who reads it has a passing familiarity with the idea of research, but no special research expertise is necessary. The book has eight chapters corresponding to the skills that research consumers need to discover evidence that matters. Fink pays special attention to facilitating student learning by providing over a hundred examples, flowcharts, tables, and checklists as well as an extensive glossary. (Students who are interested in any specific topic can further their knowledge by using the related website, which contains links to other sites as well as additional examples and exercises). All the examples are taken from existing research and programs and grounded in the practitioner's reality. Key Features: Provides methods for determining the validity of evidence and how to justify an acceptable level of "proof" based on science, experience, and values Offers practical frameworks to guide the research process and which take the student from needs assessment to program implementation and evaluation through to implementation of results. Shows how to engage diverse stakeholders (communities, teachers) in the research process Contains an Instructor's Resources CD with supplemental studies and exercises for students; some of the studies and exercises are linked to studies on the internet so that students are required to practice the tools and concepts presented in the book.