The Importance of Appealing to Science

I think that sometimes it's important to appeal to scientific methods or findings, even when it doesn't command a cent. So I teach large lecture classes and small classes every year as does everyone on this stage. One of the things I do is I look to educational literature about the best teaching methods in various forms. Educational research is a disaster. It's just a total list. There are small samples of classrooms in particular universities with very specific types of interventions. And then we're supposed to draw some inference about how all students, regardless of their background,Regardless of their geographical location,. Regardless of their educational training in the previous year... The evidence there just doesn't warrant the types of inferences