Most educational research is qualitative because the quality of an education is the most pertinent factor in academic research. While there is certainly value in quantifying what proportion of the student population belongs to a certain demographic sector and what proportion responds positively to a specific educational protocol, the greatest value in research is in evaluating how well children learn from a particular protocol, something that cannot generally not be comprehensively evaluated from a quantitative standpoint. Moreover, quantitative assessments are largely statistical analyses showing how often a particular result occurred in testing. Even if a particular protocol obtained "good scores," it does not necessarily follow that it was a good protocol. Qualitative research explores not only the statistical but the emotional, the cognitive, and the intangible aspects that are so important to a child-how it makes him feel, whether he enjoys doing it or not, and how much it motivates him to continue learning. In addition, education is often concerned with innovation and creativity in learning, which is simply not easily measurable quantitatively. A focus on the quantitative is what has caused some schools in the past to overemphasize grades and some teachers to "teach to" the standardized tests so that students would perform well on the tests. Students just learn the answers to the questions but do not gain a real understanding of the material. In sum, while there is some room for quantitative research in education, there is not much. The most substantive and useful research is qualitative, as that can be translated from the research into the classroom where it can be put into practice.
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