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This book educates students to become intelligent consumers of educational research and introduces basic research principles to those who may eventually use research in their work.
Principles for conducting research and criteria for evaluating its overall credibility are presented in a concise manner, with numerous excerpts from published studies, to enable students to learn to read, understand, and evaluate research, and judge the usefulness of the findings for educational practice. There is extensive use of aides to facilitate student learning, including chapter roadmaps and concept maps, study questions, a book website, consumer tips, over 90 examples from published articles (including eight full length articles), and author reflections. The Fifth Edition includes a more extensive presentation of experimental and quasi-experimental design, consistent with the current emphasis on conducting “scientific research,” qualitative data analysis, effect size, and a new chapter devoted to mixed-method studies and action research.
Educational Research: Fundamentals for the Consumer, Fifth Edition
James H. McMillan
Our faculty reviewed all the available texts in the field and felt Educational Research best fit our needs. We teach this course to a wide variety of students in a variety of majors (counseling, physical education, curriculum and instruction, educational administration, etc.) and it did the best job of providing for all these individual needs.
Steve Neill, Emporia State University
I think the features add a nice element and are helpful for students to better understand the text. I direct students to the research articles and use some of the charts and tables in my lectures. I point out the outlines in the front of the chapters and direct them to the website for practice exam questions.
Anastasia Elder, Mississippi State University
Designed to help students become intelligent consumers of educational research, the fifth edition of this text introduces basic research principles to those who may later use research in their work. The author utilizes aids to facilitate student learning, including chapter concept maps, study questions, a book website, and more than 90 examples from published articles, including 11 full-length articles.
New features in this edition include the following:
- Completely revised Chapter 3, Locating and Reviewing Related Literature, consistent with new features of ERIC and online searching
- Revised Chapter 1, which now discusses the nature of research consistent with Scientific Research in Education
- New chapter on mixed-method and action research
- Expanded treatment of qualitative data analysis in response to instructor s needs
- More detail about research ethics
- Examples and excerpts from published articles representing more than 50 different journals to illustrate the range of current thinking
- A new Exercise Manual available to be packaged with the text at no extra cost developed to provide more application exercises for students
