Ethical and practical similarities between pedagogical and clinical research

Clinical research and educational research face similar practical and ethical constraints that impact the rigor of both kinds of studies. Practical constraints facing undergraduate science education research include small sample sizes (largely a result of disproportionate incentives to conduct educational research at small colleges versus large universities), and the impossibility of randomizing individual students to separate arms of a study. Ethical constraints include gaining the informed consent and assuring the confidentiality of study participants, and the requirement of equipoise (i.e., that it is unethical to subject some study participants to an experimental treatment that researchers have good reason to believe to be inferior to another treatment). While these constraints have long been recognized for clinical research, their implications for educational research have not been fully recognized. Criticism that educational research lacks rigor should be tempered by the recognition that educational research is not parallel to laboratory research, but is parallel to clinical research. These parallels suggest solutions to some of the practical and ethical difficulties faced by educational researchers, as well.