EDUC 511 Understanding Educational Research and Statistics

This course is designed to provide you with a basic understanding of the statistical procedures and other methods used in educational research and to introduce you to the current trends being used to measure student achievement and teacher effectiveness. Portions of the course will require that you compute statistics by hand and use a statistical software package. For all analyses; however, there will be an emphasis on the interpretation of the statistical results rather than on rote memorization of mathematical formulas. Successful students will learn both descriptive and inferential statistics, along with a host of qualitative and interpretive approaches to educational research in order to craft their own research proposal. Additionally, a portion of the course is devoted to understanding the instruments, methods, and metrics that are used in the state of Tennessee to measure student achievement and to evaluate teacher effectiveness.