Toward More Rapid Accumulation of Knowledge about What Works in Physics Education: The Role of Replication, Reporting Practices, and Meta-Analysis

Abstract

This chapter examines the literature on interventions in physics education through the lens of optimizing and accelerating knowledge accumulation. Specifically, intervention research in physics education is discussed in terms of the prevalence of randomized designs and meta-analyses of effects from similar interventions. The authors make several recommendations to the physics education research community, citing calls from within and outside of physics education for more rigorous designs, more comprehensive and transparent study reporting practices, and increased efforts to synthesize intervention research. The call for improved reporting practices is framed in the need for supporting replication studies, both direct (i.e., exact) and conceptual, with an acknowledgement of the challenges related to direct replication and the affordances of conceptual replications for theory-building. Included in the chapter are suggestions for how entities such as funding agencies, preeminent journals, and evidence clearinghouses can facilitate knowledge accumulation by incentivizing and supporting more rigorous primary intervention studies, as well as replications and syntheses thereof.