Psychology of Education

Ted Golota Psychology of Education Dr. Mueller 01/22/09	Analysis of an Educational Study

Dear reader, the following website contains a link to an education study which will be analyzed and made sense of. The study is about mathematical achievement by language-minority students . =======================================> When reading this page, please read from left to right then snake your way down to the left box and back to the right.	Click here in order to read the study. While you read this, keep in mind what the study is getting at and what claim is being made. Click here for a guide to comprehending the study
Now that you have read the study, think of some of the key facts you should have gotten out of the study before fully analyzing the data. What is this study all about / what is the point of the study? How is the study categorized? Are there sub-categories? After you have pondered about such questions feel free to click on the following link for the answers. CLICK ME!	"DONT DRINK AND DERIVE"
Now, I have made a link for the achievements in each category for 1st and 5th grade. Click on the following links to see them. Category 1 Category 2 Category 3	After looking at the categories I have made another page to show the average scores of 1st and 5th grade. click here : (a+b+c)/3
FLAWS IN THE STUDY In every study there are flaws. Flaws especially occur in longitudinal studies because we cannot control whether the subject dies or doesn’t want to partake in the study anymore. The major flaw is that some races could not be included in the study because there weren’t a sufficient amount of student who were white or black that knew other languages and spoke something besides English. The other flaw is that during the 5th grade category, there wasn't a sufficient amount of kids who had mothers who were missing or had a bachelor’s education.	Looking at all the evidence we can look at the average gain of students and see that the claim is supported and by looking at the information we can see that when averaging the three categories, we can see that there is an evident winner in gains. With the highest amount of gain was group E-P with an average gain of 56.9. With the middle amount of gain was group E with an average gain of 55.1. With the highest amount of gain was group E-L with an average gain of 54.3. This study showed that English speakers who also know another language are more likely to achieve better in math throughout the years.
IS THIS STUDY VALID AND FACTUAL? Because the flaws are not very detrimental to the study, this experiment can be considered valid. Also because of all the references and the tables of data, we can infer that this is a valid and factual study.