For as long as anyone can remember, there have been calls in educational research to do more randomised controlled trials. The RCT is often heralded as the gold standard for the field. One reason for this is that educationalists believe that the rise of RCT methodology (beginning in force in the 1940s) is what created modern medicine, a far more successful discipline than education has ever been. It is obvious enough what potential RCTs have for education. They are underused and we lack the resources and and expertise in education to put that right quickly. I am all for RCTs. But there are deep differences between the application of RCTs in medicine and education that means that this isn’t the fix that will finally modernise education or bring it in line with other more ‘scientific’ endeavours. Education is a speciality all of its own. Here are four big reasons why RCTs are different in education than elsewhere…
Flowchart of the Phases of a Randomised Controlled Trial.
Adapted by PrevMedFellow from CONSORT 2010. CC BY-SA 3.0