Intro to Quantitative Research

Catalog description

In this course, students will learn how to synthesize and use many forms of evidence and knowledge when making both policy and professional practice decisions. With accountability, fiscal integrity, and quality as driving concerns, the course focuses on what education leaders need to understand, know, and do, to facilitate informed decision making. A core component of the course involves developing an understanding of the major meta-theoretical positions in education, philosophy, and social science that influence policy and practice in education: positivism/post-positivism, interpretive theory, and critical theory. The three meta-theories lead to different research questions, different research methodologies, different types of data, different ways of analyzing data, and different ways of linking theory to research and practice. Students will develop and defend a position on both the question of meta-theory/ideology and the way theory, research, and practice should be linked. At a real-world, practical level, students will learn to critically interpret simple and complex quantitative research in the experimental, correlational, and survey traditions. Further, they will learn about standard qualitative research methods (e.g., ethnography, interviews, case studies, historiography, participatory action research, instructional design, and emancipatory research).